Jupiter 9 on Zorki 5 - should the rangefinder still work?

[thecornflake]

This may be a stupid question but if I put my Jupiter 9 lens on my Zorki 5 the rangefinder is completely out. If I look at something 1 meter away it's almost machign with the lens on infinity, but as I focus down towards 1 metre it just goes further out. With the 50mm lens that came with it it's bang on. I've tried different combinations of setting the lenses differently before taking off\putting on but it's the same.

 

[Eriktheviking]

A question Simon,
1. Does the Zorki 5 work with other lenses? - If it does my guess is a problem with the Jupiter lens

I'm not familiar with the Zorki 5 but most range finders have 2 windows visible at the front and in the viewfinder you see a small square / diamond shape which changes as the coupled focus is adjusted or as you move the focus wheel on the uncoupled range finders. if you can check this is working with a different lens than recheck the Jupiter if it still isn't operating properly then the lens isn't compatible with this camera.

 

[thecornflake]

It has an m39 mount. The Jupiter lens has the right mount and fits on the camera. It's a coupled rangefinder, there's a metal plate inside where the lens goes and this is pushed in when the lens is focussed and that moves the rangefinder in the viewfinder.

 

[Eriktheviking]

Not sure whats going on here it seems it should work maybe it is a problem with the lens itself.

 

[thecornflake]

It's the lens design, having looked in more detail. The lens moves in and out inside the mount when being focussed, and this moves the plate for the rangefinder. This can be seen here - http://jay.fedka.com/index_files/Page422.htm - and actually lower down on that page it does mention potential issues with the rangefinder coupling and different lenses.

The Industar that came with the camera is flush with the mount when foucssed at 1 metre, then moves in as it's changed towards infinity. The Jupiter-9 is flush at infinity and moves back inside the barrel as you go back down to 1 metre. So the rangefinder won't work with the Jupiters (the J-11 is even worse - it's further back inside the barrel).

Which is a shame because I just bought an original universal viewfinder to cover the extra 2 lenses. So my only means of focussing is guess distance

 

[ChrisR]

"guess distance"... the "ooh lah lah" name for that is zone focusing, nest ce pas?

 

[dmb]

A bit late but - sounds like you have a Jupiter 9 made for the early Zenit SLR (which was a 39mm screw) which would not have the range finder cam and also may not even have the same flange to film distance so scale focussing would be off.