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

Russar MR-2 20mm f/5.6

KMZ · LTM + Contax RF · 1958

Also known as: Russar MR-2 20mm f/5.6 · Russar MP-2 5.6/20 · Russar 20mm f5.6 · Russar 20mm · Руссар МР-2 · PYCCAP MP-2 · MR-2 20mm f/5.6 · Russar 2cm f/5.6

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
GOI prototype LTM 1956–1957 — One prototype pictured in the GOI catalogue of 1963 (sovietcams PT0205); no count
Pre-series, '1:5,6 F=2cm' nameplate LTM 1957–1962 #00032 — the earliest sovietcams knows, from Soviet literature; #00039 is the lens that took the Brussels medal in 1958
#00069 (eBay 2016) and #00070, released 9 September 1959 — the second form, without the three visible screws on the rear plate
#00496 — a later lens of the same form 		Cavina: 'perhaps not even 100'; sovietcams shows the batch in two forms and calls both extremely rare
KMZ chrome, '5,6/20' nameplate LTM 1963–1972 #00201 — earliest known with the 5,6/20 plate, 1963–64 (large serial digits)
#01239 — earliest with the small serial digits, 1964 onward
#04212 — earliest known export lens, RUSSAR in Roman letters 		Sovietcams: 700–800 in 1963–64 with the large serial font, then about 3,500 in 1964–72 in the small font, export lenses included — 'unconfirmed' is its own word
KMZ black, no filter thread LTM 1972–1973 #05574 — earliest known black export lens
#06255 — made 30 May 1973 (sovietcams' dated example)
#73243 — the first export lenses with a year prefix, five or six digits, 1973 		Sovietcams: about 2,000 in 1972–73
KMZ black with 49 mm filter thread LTM 1974–1995 #740070 — 1974, the first lens with the wide filter thread; serials now carry the year
#750306 — 1975 onward, the last focusing scale (0.5-0.55-0.6-0.65-0.7-0.8-0.9-1-1.1-1.3-1.5-1.7-2-2.5-3-4-6-12-∞) and, from about 1977, the new KMZ logo
#880102 — 1988–95, serial moved to the aperture ring
#940231, #940476 — 1994 lenses offered by a Tokyo dealer and at Flints 		No figure published; Cavina's 7,000–8,000 for the whole run is the only total offered, and the post-1974 lenses are its least counted part
Kiev/Contax bayonet adaptation Contax RF — #00651 — a prototype with no focusing or distance scale
#03210 — a prototype with its own scale, in the Alain Berry collection (USSRPhoto) 		USSRPhoto: 'very low production numbers — extremely rare odd ball'; two prototypes recorded, and whether it was ever a commercial product is disputed
  1. Every dated serial above is from sovietcams' owner registry of the Zorki-mount Russar, which gives an "earliest so far known" number for each form: a floor on what has been seen, not the first lens made. Its batch sizes (700–800, about 3,500, about 2,000) are the registry's estimates and one of them carries its own "unconfirmed". Marco Cavina, working from the same kind of serial evidence, arrives at 7,000–8,000 lenses in thirty-seven years.
  2. The design year is given four ways: 1953 for the optical scheme (allphotolenses), 1956 for the GOI calculation (sovietcams; Cavina says September 1956), 1957 (Russian Wikipedia) and 1958 for the start of production, which most sources agree on. Sovietcams alone says KMZ released it "since 1957". The Brussels award is also told two ways — a Grand Prix for a set of Soviet lenses that included the MR-2 (Russian Wikipedia, allphotolenses) or a gold medal for lens #00039 itself (sovietcams). Both may be right: the Grand Prix went to the exhibit, the medal to the lens.
  3. The design. Rusinov's patent, US 2,516,724, was filed in August 1946 and granted in July 1950 for "a wide angle orthoscopic anastigmatic photographic objective" of two symmetrical halves, each a steep negative meniscus outside a cemented positive group. Its point is the entrance pupil: the outer menisci are so strongly curved that the pupil grows towards the edge of the field — "aberrational vignetting", the phenomenon Rusinov had described in 1938 — so that illumination falls with the cube of the angle rather than the fourth power. The patent claims 120° and more with 10–12% edge illumination. The MR-2 is that scheme at 20mm for the 24×36 frame, covering 95° (true focal length 19.71 mm), and it is the only Russar ever made for a camera mount: the MR-3 (f/6.8) and the Russar-25, -29 and their kin are aerial-survey lenses, the Reflex-Russar-7 a 250mm f/1 mirror system, none of them fitting a body in this catalog.
  4. Specifications. Russian Wikipedia's table (from the Soviet reference literature) gives 95 g, a filter of M49×0.5 or M49×0.75, resolution 40/36/18 lines per mm at the centre, 10 mm and 20 mm off axis, and zero geometrical vignetting. Japanese owners weigh their lenses at 95–98 g; Dach measures 35 lines/mm at the centre and 20 at the edge on a 42-megapixel sensor. The 49 mm thread belongs only to the lenses from 1974; every earlier Russar has no thread, and the aperture ring at the front of the barrel is why a filter on the later lens gets in the way of the stop.
  5. The finder. The lens shipped with its own metal 2 cm finder, called the VI-20 by allphotolenses, numbered separately (finder #01425 with lens #00803 in one surviving kit) and boxed with it; a Russar without the finder is a Russar missing half its value, and sellers price it so. The 2014 Lomography reissue, made at Krasnogorsk to the same optical prescription with modern coatings and a brass barrel, is not catalogued here.
  6. Two auction prices. Leitz Photographica Auction 32 sold chrome lens #2541 with finder, caps and box for €540 including premium against a €400–500 estimate; Flints sold black lens #940476 with its finder for £264 on 1 November 2018. Tokyo dealers asked ¥45,000 and ¥61,800 for lenses alone in 2025; a restored early kit with finder was listed at $699.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A stubby lens with a deeply curved rear element standing only about 11 mm from the film plane; it will not clear the meter arm of an M5 or the shutter of most digital bodies without care
  • Aperture ring at the very front of the barrel, f/5.6 to f/22; before 1974 there is no filter thread at all
  • Rangefinder does not couple — every Russar is scale-focused, with the matching 2 cm finder in the shoe

GOI prototype:

  • A different barrel: glossy finish, a taller front mount, depth-of-field indices ahead of the focus ring and a conventional aperture ring below it (Cavina, from the GOI drawing)

Pre-series, '1:5,6 F=2cm' nameplate:

  • Nameplate reads РУССАР МР-2 1:5,6 F=2cm with the Cyrillic П for coated
  • First form has three visible screws on the rear plate; the second has none
  • Focusing scale 0.5-0.6-0.7-0.8-0.9-1-1.15-1.3-1.5-1.7-2-2.5-3-4-6-10-∞

KMZ chrome, '5,6/20' nameplate:

  • Plate now reads 5,6/20; the П is gone
  • Satin chrome barrel; no filter thread — the aperture ring sits at the front
  • Export lenses lettered RUSSAR MR-2 in Roman script, sold through Mashpriborintorg

KMZ black, no filter thread:

  • All-black barrel, otherwise the chrome lens; the same 0.5…10-∞ focusing scale

KMZ black with 49 mm filter thread:

  • A wide 49 mm filter ring ahead of the aperture ring, the one visible change of 1974
  • Year in the first two digits of the serial from 1974; on the last lenses the serial is engraved on the aperture ring

Kiev/Contax bayonet adaptation:

  • KMZ's optical unit in an adapter said to be made by Arsenal, coupling to the inner bayonet of the Kiev; the rangefinder does not couple

Serial-range notes

five digits, no year
From the first lens to 1973 the Russar is numbered plainly from #00032 upward with no year in front; sovietcams' registry places the blocks by the nameplate and barrel, not the number. A 1959 lens is #00070 and a May 1973 lens is #06255, so the whole first fifteen years fit inside 7,000 numbers.
73xxx, 74xxxx onward
The Soviet year prefix arrives in 1973 on export lenses (#73243, still five digits) and is universal from #740070 in 1974, six digits thereafter. The two-digit rule holds to the end: #880102 is a 1988 lens, #940476 a 1994 one.

Specifications

Formula
Russar type — symmetrical, two steep negative outer menisci about cemented inner groups
Designed by
Rusinov Mikhail Mikhailovich — optical design, GOI, 1956 (sovietcams; Cavina gives September 1956)
Construction
6 elements / 4 groups
Aperture range
f/5.6–f/22
Diaphragm blades
7
Min. focus
0.5 m
Weight
95 g
Filter
49 mm (0.5 mm pitch)
Years manufactured
1958–1995
Country
Russia
Coating
Single-coated from the start; the early nameplates carry the Cyrillic П for coated (sovietcams)

What reviewers say

History

The Russar MR-2 is the only lens Mikhail Rusinov ever made for a camera you could hold. Everything else that bore his name — the Liar-6 of 1934, the Russar-1 of 1936, the RF-96 of 1942 that fixed the six-glass symmetrical form, the 122° and 133° survey lenses that earned him three Stalin Prizes and a Lenin Prize — went into aerial cameras. In 1938 he described the phenomenon he called aberrational vignetting: make the outer menisci of a symmetrical lens steep enough and the entrance pupil grows towards the edge of the field, so light falls away with the cube of the angle instead of the fourth power. He filed the design in the United States in 1946 and the patent was granted in 1950. Zeiss’s Biogon of 1951, Schneider’s Super-Angulon and Rodenstock’s Grandagon are usually said to descend from it, a claim Soviet sources make firmly and Western ones more quietly.

The State Optical Institute recomputed the scheme at 20mm and f/5.6 in 1956 and Krasnogorsk had lenses in 1958, the year a set of Soviet optics including this one took the Grand Prix at the Brussels World’s Fair; sovietcams says lens #00039 itself came home with a gold medal. Ninety-five degrees on the 24×36 frame, three degrees more than the Biogon 21 of 1954, and almost no distortion. What followed was small and slow: fewer than a hundred pre-series lenses marked F=2cm, then 700 or 800 with the 5,6/20 plate in 1963–64, some 3,500 chrome lenses to 1972, 2,000 black ones in 1972–73, and a long tail with the year in the serial and, from 1974, a 49 mm filter thread — until 1995, when the last KMZ lenses left, with the number engraved on the aperture ring. Cavina’s total is 7,000 to 8,000 in thirty-seven years. Nearly all are in Leica thread for the Zorki and FED; the Kiev-bayonet adaptation, with Arsenal’s mount around KMZ’s glass, exists in two recorded prototypes and a dispute about whether anything else was sold.

In the hand it is a stub of a lens, 95 g, with the aperture ring at the very front and a rear element standing eleven millimetres from the film. That last figure is its whole character on modern bodies: on a digital rangefinder or a full-frame mirrorless camera the corners go dark and purple, and no profile quite fixes it. On film, and on the small-sensor bodies Japanese owners favour, it does what the patent said it would — straight lines, even light to the edges, modest sharpness at f/5.6 that improves by f/11, and flare when the sun is anywhere near the frame. It never coupled to a rangefinder; the matching 2 cm finder sat in the shoe, numbered separately, and a Russar offered without it is missing half its value. Lomography’s Russar+ of 2014 is the same prescription remade at Krasnogorsk with modern coatings; it is not catalogued here.

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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 wanted — shot with a Russar MR-2 20mm f/5.6? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $620 across 10 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $590–$760). First day tracked.

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Related: Orion-15 28mm f/6 · Jupiter-12 35mm f/2.8 · Biogon 21mm f/4.5 · Super-Angulon 21mm f/4

Sources (12)

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.