LZOS Jupiter-9 85mm f2

So pleased with my first Soviet M42 lens purchase, a 1978 Helios 44M, I decided to take the plunge & buy another piece of Soviet glass.

The Jupiter-9 is an 85mm f2, a focal length classically used for portraiture. After the 1.54x crop factor of an APS-C sensor the effective focal length is 131mm, making it an ideal replacement for the common 135mm f2.8. Designed for portraiture, images are understandably soft wide open, but quickly sharpen as you stop down; the beneath was taken at f4. Really need to take it out & do some actual portraiture mind.

I wasn’t quite so lucky with the serial number this time, getting a 1991 sample. Those who know Soviet history will recall that the USSR collapsed in 1991 & as the rumours of this collapse circulated there was an understandable drop in the quality of output from state-subsidised optical plants like KMZ & its satellite plant LZOS. Still, whilst this particular sample may not be optically as good as some of the earlier, chromed samples, the build quality is still superb & the rings are some of the smoothest I have felt. Incidentally, this is the first pre-set aperture lens I have used; there are two aperture rings, one to set what aperture you want & a second to actually stop down. So you set the aperture you want with the first ring, focus wide open & then stop down with the second ring before taking the shot.

New site, new ideas

That’s right, I’ve finally updated the site after more than 2 years of inactivity! I also have a new, more memorable URL – www.imagesofeden.co.uk!

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I learned from my mistakes with the previous site, which was completely statically coded making updates & changes very time-consuming, building the new site on WordPress with the Yet Another PhotoBlog (YAPB) plugin & the YAPB-specific theme Phloggin’. I’ll be adjusting & tweaking things for a while to come yet, so don’t be surprised if the appearance changes or if things are still broken – (in fact, considering letting me know if you come across anything that doesn’t work? Feedback on the site design is of course welcome.

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This new implementation not only makes updating & altering much quicker & easier, but also adds a host of new features such as categories, tags, comments, RSS feeds & more. Layout is 960 pixels wide, which should be fine even for dinky netbooks with their 1024×600 screens.

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With this month heralding my 21st birthday I will soon be the proud owner of a Pentax K20D, a 14.6 megapixel digital SLR that is compatible with all of my existing Pentax film lenses. I will be shifting over to digital for the majority of my photos, mainly for how better suited it is to the Internet-centric lifestyle that I live, however I will still be shooting film on occasion & digitizing negatives with my Epson Perfection V200.

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I have some 50-60 rolls to scan & archive, so updates of old film shots will intersperse the new digital ones for quite a while to come yet. I’ll also be re-digitizing all of the film shots from the old site, as they were done using a far inferior scanner & aren’t of archive quality.

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I’ll be updating on a wider range of subjects, but they’ll all be nicely categorized, so you can ignore what you’re not interested in. Updates will hopefully be on a much more frequent basis too!