Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Jupiter-9 85mm f/2

KMZ · Contax RF + LTM · 1950 · Sonnar — the Zeiss 8.5cm f/2 design

Also known as: Jupiter-9 85mm f/2 · ZK-85 · ЗК-85 · ЮПИТЕР-9

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Contax/Kiev bayonet Contax RF 1950–1990 #000007 and #000220 (1948) — the ZK-85, sovietcams' earliest recorded examples; six digits, no year in front
#5100703 — 1951; #5600139 — 1956
#570001 — 1957, the Arsenal 'Rekord-9' prototype; #570091 — 1957 and #620189 — 1962, Arsenal production, six digits
#611346T — 1961, Arsenal, with the letter T appended
#6103022 — 1961; #6308993 and #6309400 — 1963; #7105802 — 1971; all LZOS-built 		No figure published
Leica thread LTM 1950–1990 #000038 (1948) — the ZK-85 in Leica thread, sovietcams' earliest recorded example; no year in front
#5000044 — 1950; #5101289 — 1951; #5400094 — 1954; #5600986 — 1956
#510072 — 1951, an experimental version, the number taken by sovietcams from Princelle's guide
#6019136 and #6022318 — 1960, the latter sovietcams' LATEST recorded example of that KMZ version
#6100155 — 1961; #6802385 — 1968; #7107465 — 1971; all LZOS-built 		No separate figure published
  1. No plant published a serial-number table or a production table for the Jupiter-9. What exists is a collector registry: sovietcams gives, for each version, an "earliest so far known" serial contributed by owners, and occasionally a latest. Those are the bounds of what has been seen, not the bounds of what was built, and in several places the earliest recorded example falls later than the version's own stated first year.
  2. The dating scheme is not Soviet-wide. FED serial numbers run straight through from 1934 to the mid-1980s with no year encoded, and Zorki bodies made before 1955 are unreliable on the same point — so a Jupiter-9 can usually be dated from its number while the body it is mounted on cannot.
  3. The corroboration, and what it covers. The specification here is KMZ's own: the Krasnogorsk plant's archive page for the Юпитер-9 gives 7 elements in 3 groups, 15 diaphragm blades, a focal length of 84.46mm, an aperture scale of 1:2–1:22, a 28° field, 1.15m closest focus for the rangefinder versions against 0.8m for the reflex ones, 335g and a 60mm barrel for the rangefinder version, and specified resolving power of 30 lines/mm at the centre and 18 at the edge. It states that the lens was first called the ЗК-85 — Зоннар Красногорский, Sonnar Krasnogorsk, 85mm — and that the drawings and the production equipment for the Zeiss Sonnar came to Krasnogorsk as reparations after the war. USSRPhoto's catalogue entry, citing fedka.com, independently gives the same 7/3 construction, the same 1.15m and a 28.8mm back focus. The page is in Russian; the figures used here are numerals from its specification table.
  4. A disagreement about where the lens starts. This entry dates the family from 1950, the year the Jupiter-9 name came into use; KMZ dates ЗК-85 production from 1948, and sovietcams' earliest recorded examples — #000007, #000038, #000220 — are 1948 lenses under that name. KMZ gives its own rangefinder Jupiter-9 production as 1951–1963, which is a KMZ figure and not a Soviet one: the same page names Lytkarino (LZOS), the Arsenal factory in Kyiv and the Progress works at Nizhyn as the other builders, and the entry's LZOS serial examples run to 1971. The 1950 start and the 1990 end are recorded as they stand rather than overwritten, but the reason should be stated plainly: 1950 is the year the name arrives, not the year the lens does. The same convention is used on the Jupiter-12, whose entry opens in 1950 while carrying BK-35 serials of 1947-48. On the object rather than the name, KMZ's own archive is the better evidence and it says 1948.
  5. The filter thread is given two ways by the maker. KMZ lists screw-in fittings of both M49×0.5 and M49×0.75 for the Jupiter-9, plus a 51mm slip-on; only the 49mm diameter is carried in the structured field above, because the pitch is not constant across the versions.
  6. A note on why this lens was copied at all. Zeiss Historica's account of the reparations names the ten lenses the Soviet authorities required Carl Zeiss to make manufacturable in Kyiv, and the Sonnar 1:2/8.5cm is the seventh of them. The 85mm f/2 was on the list from the start; the 8.5cm f/4 Triotar was not.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A 15-blade aperture — unusually round for a Soviet lens, and given as 15 in KMZ's own specification for the lens
  • Seven elements in three groups, the Sonnar count; focal length stated by KMZ as 84.46mm rather than a round 85
  • The Sonnar portrait lens, at a price that made 85mm f/2 ordinary
  • Rangefinder versions focus to 1.15m and take a 49mm front filter; the later SLR versions focus to 0.8m, so a barrel marked to 0.8m is not a rangefinder lens

Contax/Kiev bayonet:

  • External bayonet with its own focusing ring, as the Zeiss lens has

Serial-range notes

the exception the rule hides
The year-prefix convention is Arsenal's from 1947 and the lens plants' from 1949 — it is not Soviet-wide and it is not KMZ-wide. KMZ's own Zorki bodies of 1948–54 run in a single sequence with no year prefix, so the rule fails there silently and plausibly: a 1951 Zorki 55325 reads as 1955, a 1953 254580 reads as 1925.
the first two digits
THE RULE. On a Soviet lens the first two digits of the serial number are the year of manufacture: 5101289 is 1951, 6309400 is 1963, 7107465 is 1971. What follows is a running number within that year, of no fixed length, so the year is read off the front and not by counting digits backwards. Mike Eckman states the rule for Kiev cameras and lenses, JAPB for Soviet equipment generally, and sovietcams' variant tables — a dated "earliest so far known" serial for nearly every version — are the working evidence.
#000007, #000038, #000220 — six digits beginning 000
THE EXCEPTION AT THE START. KMZ's 1948 output under the ZK-85 name, before the lens was called a Jupiter, was numbered plainly from 000001 with no year in front. sovietcams marks the changeover explicitly, noting of the 1949 versions that there is a "date prefix in the serial number already"; from #49xxxx onward the scheme holds.
#570091, #620189, #611346T — six digits — against #6103022, #6309400 — seven
The length of the number tracks the plant rather than the decade. In sovietcams' recorded examples the Arsenal-built Kiev-mount lenses of 1957–1963 run to six digits — the year and four — while LZOS lenses of the same years run to seven. A 1961 Jupiter-9 may therefore be #611346T or #6103022 depending only on where it was made. Read the first two digits and ignore the rest of the length.
a letter T appended to the digits, as #611346T
sovietcams separates one Arsenal version by a T added to the serial. It is a suffix on the number, not part of it; the year still reads from the first two digits. No source consulted here says what the T stands for.

Specifications

Formula
Sonnar — the Zeiss 8.5cm f/2 design
Designed by
Bertele Ludwig — Original Sonnar 8.5cm f/2 calculation, Zeiss · Maltsev M. D. — Recalculated the lens at KMZ (Красногорский механический завод)
Construction
7 elements / 3 groups
Aperture range
f/2–f/22
Diaphragm blades
15
Min. focus
1.15 m
Dimensions
60 mm diameter
Weight
335 g
Filter
49 mm
Years manufactured
1950–1990
Country
Russia

What reviewers say

History

The Jupiter-9 is the 8.5cm Sonnar, and for most photographers it is the only way to own that design. Zeiss made its version from 1932 to 1961 in modest numbers and they are expensive; the Soviet version was made for forty years and is not.

The copy was not improvised. Larry Gubas, working in the Carl Zeiss archive in Jena for Zeiss Historica, found the Soviet reparations demand of November 1945 naming ten specific lenses that were to be made manufacturable in Kyiv, complete with eight sets of drawings and sample lenses each; the Sonnar 1:2/8.5cm is on that list. KMZ’s own archive page says the drawings and the production equipment came to Krasnogorsk after the war, and that the lens was first sold as the ЗК-85 — Зоннар Красногорский, Sonnar Krasnogorsk, 85mm — before it was a Jupiter.

It mounts on the Contax external bayonet with its own focusing ring, as the Zeiss lens does, and exists in Leica thread as well. The aperture has fifteen blades, which keeps the opening round at every setting — an unusual piece of generosity in a lens built to a state price, and a figure KMZ prints in its own specification rather than a collector’s observation.

Quality varies more than the design does. Soviet optical production was capable of excellence and of indifference, sometimes in the same week, and a Jupiter-9 is worth buying on the individual example rather than on the model.

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This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Example photos

Sample photo taken with the Jupiter-9 85mm f/2
Jupiter-9 85mm f/2 (Jacek Halicki) — Jacek Halicki, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sample photo taken with the Jupiter-9 85mm f/2
Comet NEOWISE, 13 July 2020 — shot on a Jupiter-9 (Giuseppe Donatiello) — Giuseppe Donatiello from Oria (Brindisi), Italy, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
Sample photo taken with the Jupiter-9 85mm f/2
Inside Cygnus — Jupiter-9 (Giuseppe Donatiello) — Giuseppe Donatiello, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Jupiter-9 85mm f/2? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $250 across 42 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $210–$320). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: up 1% from $250.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$250$210–$32042
2026-09-06$250$210–$30042

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

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Listings updated 2026-09-11. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Jupiter-11 135mm f/4 · Jupiter-8 50mm f/2 · Sonnar 8.5cm f/2

Sources (9)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this lens, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.