I have a Fed 2 camera. Wondering what people's opinions are for the best russian lens to put on it for street shooting. thanks

I'd go for the Industar 61 (53mm 1:2,8) which is a really sharp an contrasty lens, or as a more wide-angle the Jupiter 12 (35mm).

Thanks Christian, I'll take a look at those two. I might be leaning towards the Jupiter 12.

I have an industar 61/D the D in in cyrillic on my fed and it is a 2.8 55mm

I have heard that the D designation is different glass formula?

It does take very good and contrasty photos

Dave,

no, the L/D is just the designator for "Rangefinder lens" while L/Z indicates a "SLR lens". The lens design and glass formulation is within only slight variations during a production time of 30 years.

thank you Roman

Does it have to be Russian? You can put old Leica and current Voightlander L39 lenses on it.

David.

I sugest the 35mm f/2.8 Jupiter-12.

My suggestion is simple: The FED 50/3.5 collapsible! Some of the others have infinity stop mechanisms which interfer with the front of the FED-2...

Roman,

Please check, several posts on Russian forums list industar 61- L/D (coming out I believe on the Fed 4 and Fed 5 series) as having improved contrast due to formula incorporating rare earth and the radio active element Lanthanum-? The lens is also touted as one of the best for leica type screw mount lenses.

I do not have an example of each lens but a comparison would be interesting.

I'd also recommend Industar-61L/D, because of its beautiful bokeh for 2-5 meter focus distances and moderate aperture (4-5.6), especially strangely beautiful for this cheap lens.

IIRC all I-61 are rare earth-glass, that was (one of the) improvement(s) when the I-26 was redesigned to become the I-61. The L/D was added later to separate the Industars for the Zenit-SLR from the "classic" Leica-mount ones.

the radio active element Lanthanum-?

Radioactive??

It's bad enough having photography to blame for my near-poverty. But now I have to blame photography for my hair falling out? :D

All right, I just bought an I-61 :)

Total price £12, including shipping. So we'll see if it's any good;)

Zenrhino, don't worry about the readioactivity. Just don't keep it in your pocket, or sleep with it under your pillow for more than a year at a time.

Yes, in L/D and L/Z marks D means dalnomernaya - a rangefinder camera in Russian, and Z is for zerkalnaya - mirror reflex camera. These designations were put in only to differentiate between two variants of the same lens - M39 and M42. All I-61 contain lanthanum optical elements inside, but some of them have multicoating, being marked MC. I love this lens very much - it performs great for its size, price and availability! The bokeh is very nice, too - between 5.6 and 8 you can obtain plenty of David shields all around the frame, and usually that looks quite nice :)

Regards from Moscow,
Zhenya

You need all of them and no playing favorites.

No one has mentioned the Jupiter 8. It is not quite as contrasty as the I-61 L/D but decently sharp even at f2.

Let's see... Now I have the FED 50mm collapsible that came with the camera, I have an In-22, an In-50, and found an In-61 in the mail today.

If I shoot a film changing between these lenses, and print the results to the best of my ability, is anyone willing to try to determine which picture was taken with which lens?

Ole,
That would be a fun thread. I was thinking of doing the same thing with some 35mm SLR lenses. I just got a cheep 35mm focal length Vivatar, Miymia/sekor, and a very reasonably priced Zeiss Distagon for my Contax and thought I would do a comparison and see if there is a visible difference.
Maybe we could start a "guess the lens" thread. :)

Maybe we could start a "guess the lens" thread. :)
Isn't that what the Leica Forum over at pdn is all about? :D

Isn't that what the Leica Forum over at pdn is all about? :D

Come to think of it, I think you are right ;)

I too was thinking to have a "bokeh" shoot-off of my lenses to compare them once and for all. For Russian I have the Jupiter-8, an Industar-61 on the way, an "Elmar" 50/3,5 (on my Russian knock-off Shanghai II). I also have a smattering of older Leica lenses (35/3,5 Summaron, 50/2 Summitar, 90/4 Elmar) plus newer 40/1,4 Nokton and 75/2,5 Color-Heliar. Sometimes I think my Jupiter-8 is my favorite. After all it's a Sonnar, right?

This is a rather good web page which lists some of the best LTM lenses:
Soviet Camera Lenses (http://home.att.net/~wayne.cornell/camera/lenslist.html). I managed to get some pretty good info from it. I think that it's only missing some of the wider lenses such as the Orion.

Kent

this is what i've heard also, i have an I-61 from about 1969 by s/n. I'd also recommend the original thread starter take a look at the Industar i-22 and i-50 which are great ltm lenses in 50mm, a little slower than the 2.8 (they're 3.5), but are collapsible and take great photos.

IIRC all I-61 are rare earth-glass, that was (one of the) improvement(s) when the I-26 was redesigned to become the I-61. The L/D was added later to separate the Industars for the Zenit-SLR from the "classic" Leica-mount ones.

Concerning radioactivity, this page (http://cameras.alfredklomp.com/fed5/radiation/) addresses the issue. I've not re-read it carefully today, but from what I recall, the author applied a Geiger counter to the lens and found a small but measurable increase in the reading with the "business end" of the counter practically touching the lens. As others have said, this shouldn't be an issue unless you keep the lens in close contact with your body for too long a period.