Jupiter 21M 200mm f4 - vintage lens review

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 When it comes to vintage soviet lenses many will tell you that you must get the Mir 1B, the Helios 44 and the Jupiter 9 to have the perfect kit; some would add the Tair 11 to the list.

Yet, there are many more interesting lenses that end up being left out of the conversation and the Jupiter 21 is one of them.

Not long ago I found this beast of a lens at a local flea market, and I was surprised to find out that the owner manual and warranty is still mostly intact.

I asked my Russian friend Masha to help me out translating part of it and we discovered that this lens came out of the Vologda Optical and Mechanical Plant, or VOMZ, in June 1993.

VOMZ was founded in the city of Vologda in 1971 and between 1977 and 1986 was part of LOMO. The factory is still active to this day, producing thermal imaging cameras.

Coincidentally, my Mir 1B comes from the same factory.

Jupiter 21M
Jupiter 21M 200mm f4

 The Jupiter is big. It weighs 980g, it is 15,5cm long when focused to infinity and 18cm when extended. The build-in sun hood takes it to almost 20cm. The front thread measures 58mm.

The iris has 8 blades, the aperture is clicked and it goes from f4 to f22. Below the aperture control there’s one more ring to switch between auto and manual aperture, that could be used as a stepless iris control.

The focusing ring is, once more, big, but also smooth, and it turns more or less 300 degrees. Minimum focusing distance is 1.8m

The “M” in the name stands for M42 (affiliate link) but there are two more versions, the 21T has a T mount and the 21A has a few different mounts like Pentax K and Nikon F

In terms of sharpness the Jupiter surpasses my expectations. There is not much difference at all between f4 and f8, so much so that I had to double check the metadata of the pictures.

Background blur is soft and boke balls are quite big but not the cleanest. Also, at 200mm a maximum aperture of f4 is plenty enough for a shallow depth of field, especially up close.

Chromatic aberration is present wide open and can be distracting on high contrast areas, but it almost completely disappears by f8

Flaring doesn’t seem to be a problem, even shooting towards the sun, but ghosting can be seen here and there with closer sources of light

At the end of the day, the Jupiter 21 is better than what I expected and, even if we are all guilty of saying this way too often, it is built like a tank.

Which is also the main con of this lens: it is heavy and unwieldy. So for people like me, doing mostly run and gun stuff, it’s useless, taking too much space and adding too much weight to the bag, but if you can deal with that, it’s actually good.

And that brings us full circle: the Jupiter 21 is a good lens but it is hard to find the right use for it.

So, if you own one, let me know in the comments below what you use it for, if you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments and don't forget to check the video for all the sample images!




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