Russian | Soviet | USSR Lens Survival Guide

[Habib Khan Awan]

Just want to say that this thread has been extremely helpful in my journey to build a vintage lens set. Really digging the characteristics from the pics!

I was however a little bummed to find out that seemingly the widest the series goes to is 20mm. Not a deal breaker by any means, just a small let down. At least until I saw this: http://www.zenitcamera.com/archive/lenses/mir-51.html

Has anyone ever even seen one of these in the wild? I tried some preliminary searching online but I can't find ANYTHING on this sucker. The translated page claims a "pilot batch" was released in 1980, but no other real info on quantity or even quality.

 

[Ilya O.]

Hello, Nick, I am very happy&proud to meet you here in my thread
I'd been reading your posts here since 2008 or so!
And I always felt you as a friend cause you were unbiassed in commenting and testing LOMO and USSR photo glass

Nick, I as far as I know, no Mir-1 had MC coating ever. It is just the different coating color per lens surface is cheating you I just found Mir-1A of 1992 production date, it is of a single layer type.

Yes, I heard about your project! Very interested! Please please share us some more pics of all lenses in your set!
Are you adding outer shells/rings or do the complete rehouse including the focusing mechanism?

Wow I wouldn't dare to do the coat removal Could you plz post some pics of the effect?
You are now more vintage than sir R.Gale himself
By the way, you know, there is one more destructive way to increase halo and scatter. You should accurately scratch the back lens of Mir-1. Just 1 little scratch of 3-5mm in length and 1mm deep, and not in the very center of a lens does a nice job

 

[Ilya O.]

Thanks Ilya!
have you ever done a direct comparison 11-35-1 VS 8-35-1? I'm curious!
what did you find??

no no my friend, had yet no luck in comparing real lenses head to head.
I just have that theoretical comparision http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...-or-new-lens&p=1693512&viewfull=1#post1693512 at hand. But that one you saw, sorry.

 

[Nick Gardner]

I'm out of town on a shoot, but I'll post an update on the lens project when I get back.

Nick

 

[Ilya O.]

Luck on you, Nick! I am eager to see your proceedings soon!

 

[Ilya O.]

Habib, I'm happy you use info published here

You won't find better vintage set than soviet ones, they have absolutely stunning price/performance ratio, the best of all lenses, actually.
To say more, nearly all lenses in the set are two-in-one pieces: nice character wide open (but yet no awful aberrations!) and very solid IQ when closed down.

Yeah, that Mir-51 beast interested me either a couple years ago, but I did not succeeded in finding more info that you linked to, and by no means there is a chance of finding one...
Some should be sitting somewhere in museums or in the happy collectors hands...

 

[Florian Berutti]

Quote Originally Posted by Tommaso Alvisi View Post
Thanks Ilya!
have you ever done a direct comparison 11-35-1 VS 8-35-1? I'm curious!
what did you find??

Hi Tommaso

I have both:
OKC11_35 in konvas form
and OKC8_35 with anamorphic front

And for the quick test i've put both on a camera (the OKC8 without ana squarefront) and i totally prefer the OKC8...more character (but i like vintage lenses ) and more contrast overall feeling.
And to answer to Ilya i 've two OKC11 so it's not a problem from the lens...it's just a personnal feeling about this precise lens.
To be honest my 22mm LOMO is also quiet soft...but it has way more character.

Thank you Ilya for the answer, so it's not possible to put OKC8 in my Konvas mechanical part.
I will try to find a proper OKC8 with konvas or kinor and OCT19 mount.

Thank you all for this kind of fantastic thread
Regards

 

[Ilya O.]

Florian, could you plz post here your test pictures? Let's make Tommaso Alvisi happy and support the community.

So you have 2 oks11-35-1 and both are soft and ugly? What serials do they have? Sample shots?
Cause, you know, if we have many samples from various years, we could discover a tendency with this model to be bad...
But have you seen the resolution graf? It has quite steep sharpness falloff:

Test charts of OKS1-35-1, OKS2-35-1, OKS8-35-1, OKS11-35-1 (resolution, aberrations, lens data)

 

[Florian Berutti]

Hello Ilya,
I'm on a shooting for one month but when i'm home i will do pictures...and i've just bougth OKC_2_35 from RAF...so i will be able to shoot picture of the 3.
But let's be clear... OKC11 is not ugly, it's just a feeling. Generally i love using 35mm, but with my lomo i just most of the time jump from 28 to 40mm.
It just doesn't feel like the rest of the set (but it's matching perfecly in regards of the color, it's a lack of contrast i woukd say but i'm not a specialist)
And my two OKC11 are from 1982...
I had the same problem with LOMO 22 from 1982 and i bought one from 1986 and this one is just perfect.
So maybe my OKC11 are just two bad models from a bad bunch.

 

[Ilya O.]

Added Planar evolution review as I understand it http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...ast-50mm-lenses-Planar-vs-Opic-Lens-evolution
pls participate and criticize, optical designers are WELCOME.

 

[Nick Gardner]

So here's my little russian lens project.

Mir 1b 37mm, Helios 44 58mm, Jupiter 85mm

They have 80mm fronts, 32p focus gears, and PL mounts. Right now using the original focusing helicoids. Down the road I may try my own. Actually, a cam system would be easier. Need more R&D on that. Oh, the 50mm, I haven't cut the gear teeth yet.

I made this set for when I want something funky but not anamorphic. I love these lenses. Next couple posts will have some shots from the lenses them selves.

 

[Nick Gardner]

Here is the 37mm I have one with a coated front element, and one that I polished the coating off of. uncoated on the left coated on the right.

 

[Nick Gardner]

Here's the 85mm. I am looking at doing the 16mm zenitar as a wide, so there are a couple of those in here too. These were all shot on my 5d, so field of view id full frame.

 

[Nick Gardner]

And finally here's a few with the 50mm industar I flipped the first element on. a fun lens.

 

[Lee Kelly]

Be careful Nick,

Some of may beg you to do us a batch!

 

[Ilya O.]

Nick, you are a MAN! Are you doing lathe works yourself!?

I got much pleasure looking at you advance! This mod seems simply at a glance, but I know for sure it is not And I bet this is not you first iteration^-)
Cool!!!

Mir-1 37m is always pretty objective lens, and even with the coating removal I do not feel it too dreamy and romantic. It handles well, and from your pics seems it behaves not too much accentuated.
Unmodded Mir is indeed basic/standard lens of a set.

Jupiter-9 85mm, well, again and again it is the creamiest lens ever.
I so much like its smoothness...just look what it makes (together with Schneider Digicon #1) with the character's skintones (turn on 4k!):

I do not have personal experience with Zenitar 16mm, but on your shots it seems very much coherent with the other's look.

That flipped lens Industar reminds me the broken machine vision, or vintage robot's eyeview lens Like HAL 9000 got damaged or upset a hah a hh

 

[Mathias Erichsen]

I just shot a series of commercials om my set of Helios 58mm 2.0 (in DSO Optikov 38,58,88mm housings)
Really love these lenses. Sharp enough and loads of character

 

[Ilya O.]

Mathias,thx for sharing quite a punchy look.
are you allowed to post links to the adv?

 

[Nick Gardner]

Hi Ilya,

Yes, I've been doing the lathe work my self. Back when the first Panasonic Varicam came out, my AC and I added up all of the brackets and widgets we needed to integrate it into a narrative film environment and quickly realized we could buy a small mill and a lathe for that price and make the stuff our selves. Now 10+ years later I have a pretty extensive little machine shop with a lathe, 2 little horizontal mills, a medium sized cnc machine, engraving machine, etc, etc.

The 37mm in these pics is black because I was experimenting with a bake on enamel. I don't like it. Once everything is done and engraved with footage scales etc, I'll just have them all anodized.

The zenitar-16mm is a cool little lens. It is made by KMZ, which also of course made all the others, so it should be a close match. On a s-35 sized sensor, the fish eye nature is much less pronounced. I have also toyed with the idea of using the Peleng 17mm which is available in PL mount, but being made in Belarus, I wonder if it shares enough optical heritage to match the others. I am sure it's pretty close. One of these days I'll buy one and see for myself.

This has been a do it in my spare time type of project, but once it's all done, it's not that difficult to do. It's mostly the figuring stuff out part that takes time.

Since the base Russian lenses are so cheap, it's a great way to have a set with different experimental parts. Hacked up front and rear elements, polished/unpolished parts, color tints with sharpies etc. I am having fun ;-)

Cheers,

Nick

 

[Tommaso Alvisi]

Thanks Ilya!!!!

lately I'm not able to keep it up with all the threads I follow ha!

What about longer lenses than the gorgeous Jupiter9???

Have you tried one of these?

Which one is the best from 100 to 150mm?

OKC2-100-2
vs
Tair 11A (it should be a Tair11 but with the swappable lens mount system, right? and maybe newer coatings?)
vs
OKC1-150-1