Most of these lenses were to the best of my knowledge produced by the Arsenal factory in Kiev, Ukraine.  I welcome corrections and further information concerning sources of design and manufacture, or news of other lenses that have been available in the Pentacon Six / Kiev 60 mount.
 

Mir-3B Mir-38B
 

When it was introduced, the Mir-3B 65mm wide-angle lens was a great advance for Medium Format photography, and it was physically smaller than the Carl Zeiss Jena 65mm Flektogon (although half a stop slower). One can imagine the pride with which the Soviet scientists and workers designed and manufactured this lens, at a time when the Soviet Union still believed, officially, at least, that it could overtake “the West” technologically. It was supplied with front and rear caps, two colour filters that were particularly useful for the black and white photography that predominated at the time and a hard case that also had a compartment for the filters, and it was beautifully presented in a smart box that was well up to the international style and standards of the day.

[C462_33.jpg]

 

However, subsequently the Mir-38B replaced the Mir-3B. As can be seen from this picture (and the data above), it was much smaller and lighter than the 3B. Unfortunately, it seems as though in the intervening years either disillusionment had set in, or at least the pride in good workmanship had decreased, and the quality control was so poor (if it existed at all!) that many sub-standard lenses left the factory, not only for the citizens of the Soviet Union of that time, but also for the wider world. In some countries, importers and distributors worked hard to overcome these problems, checking, adjusting, repairing or even rejecting items that did not come up to professional standards.  In the U.K., Technical and Optical Equipment (London) Ltd did an excellent job, thereby ensuring that Soviet lenses achieved and maintained a high reputation in that country. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, there was an uncontrolled flooding of the market with photographic equipment from the Former Soviet Union, some of it brought to London in backpacks by Poles who travelled between Warsaw and London by bus, and sold it both privately and through some retail photographic chains.  The quality of such items was often extremely poor. It is therefore advisable to check such items carefully before parting with money. A description of my experiences with this particular Mir-38B can be found here.

[C462_34.jpg] The Mir-3B on the left, with the Mir-38B on the right

Tair-33

The manufacturers were extremely proud to have received the “Grand Prix” award for this lens at the 1958 Universal Exhibition at the Atomium in Brussels in 1958, and for decades referred to this award in their publicity.  The lens is good, but extremely heavy, and it has no automatic control for the aperture – admittedly a very new concept at that time.  Instead, it has a manual pre-set lever that enables the lens to be opened to full aperture for composition and focussing, and then stopped down to the pre-selected aperture without having to look at the diaphragm settings.  The lens also has a built-in retractable lens hood.  This is, however, extremely shallow and can’t provide much shading.  It is illustrated here next to a much newer and slightly smaller version developed for use with the 35mm Zenith Photosniper camera.

The Cyrillic (Russian-language) spelling of the lens can be seen in the above photo.  The lens was also widely exported, and some of the exported lenses had the name ring printed in Latin (or Roman) script (the alphabet that is used for English and most West-European languages, amongst others).  On these lenses, the name was transcribed as “TAYIR”.  Naturally, the manufacturers are entitled to transcribe the names of their products as they wish, and this was clearly an attempt to show that the original name is pronounced as two syllables and not one.  However, “TAIR” is an acceptable transliteration of the Cyrillic and so is also sometimes seen in descriptions of the lens.  In fact, “TAIR” is the Latin lettering that was chosen by the manufacturers for the Photosniper version of this lens, as can be seen in the above photograph! “TAYIR” lettering on lens

w “TAIR” or “TAYIR” with Latin script

The Tair-33 can also be seen here.

In 2003 and again in 2008 a “Jupiter-6” lens was offered on eBay.  It was described as an extremely rare f/2.8 180mm lens in Kiev 60 / Pentacon Six mount.  It appeared to have no aperture pin, to judge by the photographs on the auction.  On both occasions the illustrations showed an all “silver” metal finish.

The two 500mm Rubinar mirror lenses (f/8 and f/5.6), which are made by the LZOS factory just north of Moscow in Russia, not by Arsenal at Kiev in Ukraine, and are designed for 35mm cameras, have occasionally been modified to work with Medium Format cameras that have the Pentacon Six mount.  I have been told that the results are very good, however, my experience with the samples that I have tested has not confirmed this.  See the results of those tests, starting here.

Arsenal also produces a 2× converter and a 1.4× converter in the Kiev 60 (Pentacon Six) mount.

This data is based on published sources.  I do not have examples of all of these lenses (!), and I have not measured or weighed all those that I do have.  Sources vary on some details such as weights, and these differences may correspond to different versions of a given lens.

Lens diagrams

Here are the lens diagrams published in the instruction manuals of two of the lenses.  Not to the same scale.
 

[mir26diag.jpg]  Lens diagram for the Arsenal Mir-26 wide-angle lens

[jupdiag.jpg]  Lens diagram for the 250mm Jupiter-36 lens

To see more lens diagrams, click here (30mm) and here (shift lenses).

Lens mounts

It would appear that all of these lenses (possibly with the exception of the 3M-3B mirror lens, the 500mm APO lens and the Mir-69B 45mm lens) were produced in two different mounts:  the Pentacon Six mount used for the Kiev 60, and the Hasselblad 1600F/1000F mount used for the Salyut / Zenith 80 / Kiev 88.  When making a purchase, it is essential to get the lens in the right mount, as they are mutually incompatible.

Until recently, manufacturers in the former Soviet Union described the Pentacon Six mount as being: mount B (in Cyrillic – the Russian alphabet – this a symbol like a b with a horizontal bar extending right from the top of the upright).  They described the Kiev 88 mount as being: mount V (B in Cyrillic – the Russian alphabet).  The differences are summarised in the following table:

It is therefore necessary to take great care when ordering a lens to make sure that it has the right mount for the camera.
 

An ideal system?

If you build up a system consisting of the 80mm Volna, the 120mm Vega and the 250mm Telear, you will have a flexible, compact and lightweight outfit that will cover most situations, with all lenses taking filters of the same size!  Naturally, if you add a wide angle lens to the outfit, you will need larger filters.

Most of the Russian and Ukrainian lenses listed above are illustrated and tested in the Lens Test section of this website.  To go to the lens test section, click here.

For further details of the lenses – number of elements and grouping of elements, variations of the lenses, etc, I refer you to Nathan Dayton's excellent website, www.commiecameras.com

To go on to the next section, click below.
Next section (Joseph Schneider lenses for the Exakta 66)

To go back to the beginning of the Lens Data section, click below and then choose the range of lenses that you want to read about.
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© TRA May 2002, September 2009