Being an admin of one of the best en most fun Facebook groups that exists on this planet (okay I'm a bit biased ;-)) I get to opportunity to try out lenses made by the Meike company, which they very kindly provide us with, so we can use them for our traveling lens project. In this project selected members of our group (the Micro Four Nerds Facebook group) get the opportunity to try out (Meike) lenses. This time Meike send us the Meike 85mm f/2.8 macro lens. Here are my experiences with this lens.

Recently I bought the Zhongyi lens turbo II M42 to M43 adapter. Later more about my experience with this adapter, first an explanation why I bought the Zhongyi. The Zhongyi lens turbo adapter costs 149 USD (that was about 130 euros with the exchange rate at the time I bought it). It is certainly not the cheapest lens turbo adapter you can buy. You can even buy ones that are around 80 USD. But those are not well made and have lenses inside them that are not very sharp. The Zhongyi is quite a bit cheaper than the better known Metabones Speedbooster (which is about 3 times more expensive). But I've read that the Zhongyi holds up quite well against its better known and more expensive counterpart in the results it produces.

The last lens in this three part review series of Russian lenses is the the MIR-1B 37mm F2.8. As I said in part two, if you look at the specs of this lens it looks like a very ordinary lens. An allround focal length of 37mm (not long but also not very wide) and a maximum aperture of F 2.8 (not too slow, but also not very bright).  It looks very nice, has a solid build, all metal and compact. The glass has a yellow sheen, because of the use of Lanthanum Oxide. A rare earth metal which was used for special optics, making the glas more resistant to alkali and optimizes the quality of the glass (it was also used in lenses made for telescopes).  

As I said in my previous blog post the lens I'm going to write about in this post couldn't be more different, compared to the 50mm macro lens. This lens is huge, heavy, build like tank and its focal length is for bringing subjects that are far away nearer. In stead of subjects that are nearby even closer. The lens I'm going to share my experiences of this time, is the Jupiter 21 200mm F4.

The beginning
"Three nice Russian lenses, in good condition", it read on the seller's website, with a description of their focal length, maximum aperture, lot price (120 euro), lens-mount (M42) plus a not very clear picture of the three lenses together. Pretty sparse. Unusual for this commercial seller, who's normally a bit more detailed. Of course I could contact the seller and ask if he could provide more information about the make of the lenses. But I was in the mood to take a gamble, and be (hopefully positively) surprised. It was a somewhat educated guess, as I ordered with the seller a couple of times before and until now he never disappointed.
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After a couple of days a cardboard box arrived with the three lenses in it. Receiving this mystery package gave me kind of a Xmas feeling. I new what was on my wish list, but didn't really know if Santa had done his homework. I was a bit surprised after opening the box. What I saw was three totally different lenses (not only in focal length, but also in build).

We begin with the Macro
As you may have already concluded after reading the numbers between the brackets in the title of this blog, I will focus on one of the three lenses in this blog and reveal the other two in the coming blogs. The lens I'm going to start with is the 50mm f2.8 macro lens. The most eye-catching feature of the lens, is the way the glass is deeply recessed inside the lens. Hereby part of the lens functions as a build in lens hood. The lens feels solidly build, completely made out metal and was in pretty good condition, except for some dust in the lens. 
​I was curious about the make of the lens and about the experiences of other photographers. After consulting Google, typing in the different characteristics of the lens I did know (aperture, focal length, Russian) I quickly found out that this was the KMZ Industar-61 50mm F2.8 L/Z