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

Jupiter-11 135mm f/4

KMZ · Contax RF + LTM · 1950 · Sonnar — the Zeiss 13.5cm f/4 design

Also known as: Jupiter-11 135mm f/4 · ЮПИТЕР-11

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Contax/Kiev bayonet Contax RF 1950–1990 #000511 (1948) — the ZK-135, sovietcams' earliest recorded Kiev-mount example; six digits, no year in front
#4902011 — 1949, the first of these to carry the year
#5000452 — 1950; #5102141 — 1951
#6001726 and #6021653 — 1960; #6502573 — 1965; all KOMZ-built 		No figure published
Leica thread LTM 1950–1990 #000022 (1948) — the ZK-135 in Leica thread, sovietcams' earliest recorded example; no year in front
#4901389 — 1949
#5000952 — 1950; #5502614 — 1955
#5805922 — 1958, KOMZ-built
A serial beginning 91 — 1991, the date BastianK gives for the lens reviewed at phillipreeve.net 		No separate figure published
  1. No plant published a serial-number table or a production table for the Jupiter-11. What exists is a collector registry: sovietcams gives, for each version, an "earliest so far known" serial contributed by owners. That is a floor on what has been seen, not a first day of production — and here the gap is visible. The KOMZ version sovietcams dates 1957–1960 has #6001726 as its earliest recorded example, a 1960 lens, three years after the stated start.
  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-11 can usually be dated from its number while the body it is screwed into cannot.
  3. The line did not begin as a copy but as an assembly. Russian Wikipedia's account of the Jupiter series records that the first batches were built from finished German lens blocks and carried the mark ЗК — Зоннар Красногорский, Sonnar of Krasnogorsk — before the Jupiter name was adopted, with the designs recalculated for Soviet optical glass between July 1947 and April 1949 and some models still made from German glass stocks until 1954.
  4. Lineage, from the Japanese M42 Mount Spiral blog: the ZK-135 of 1948–50 was the Sonnar 13.5cm f/4 built on German glass taken as reparations; when that glass ran out, M. D. Maltsev at KMZ recomputed the design for Soviet glass in 1952, which is the Jupiter-11 proper. KMZ built it (and a cine version) from 1952 to about 1959; the Kazan plant (KOMZ) took production from 1957 and made the silver and, later, black barrels most examples wear. Twelve blades, f/4–22, 40.5 mm filter, 3 m close focus.
  5. Reception in Japan: the same writer finds resolution and contrast 'exceptional' and the rendering 'close to a modern lens', and notes the 135mm length is an unpopular one for portraits, which keeps the price down; Fotoborse's dealer note calls it low in colour fringing and good in rendering.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • The longest rangefinder-coupled lens in the Kiev system, as the Zeiss 13.5cm was in the Contax

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: 5102141 is 1951, 5805922 is 1958, 6502573 is 1965. 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. BastianK applies the rule to this exact lens at phillipreeve.net — "the first two digits of the serial number are the production year, 91 in this case" — and Mike Eckman and JAPB state it for Kiev equipment and for Soviet equipment at large.
#000022, #000511 — six digits beginning 000
THE EXCEPTION AT THE START. KMZ's 1948 output under the ZK-135 name, before the Jupiter name existed, 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 #49xxxxx onward the scheme holds.
a serial beginning 91
The scheme outlasted the state that made it. The lens reviewed at phillipreeve.net is dated 1991 from its first two digits, and JAPB records that several formerly Soviet plants kept the same convention after 1991 — which is why a two-digit prefix is a year and not a clue about which republic built the lens.

Specifications

Formula
Sonnar — the Zeiss 13.5cm f/4 design
Construction
4 elements / 3 groups
Aperture range
f/4
Min. focus
1.5 m
Weight
260 g
Filter
40.5 mm (0.5 mm pitch)
Years manufactured
1950–1990
Country
Russia

What reviewers say

History

The Jupiter-11 is the 13.5cm Sonnar, made in the Soviet Union, and it completes a set: Jupiter-3 for the f/1.5 fifty, Jupiter-8 for the f/2, Jupiter-9 for the 8.5cm, Jupiter-11 for the 13.5cm and Jupiter-12 for the Biogon. The entire Kiev lens line is the Zeiss Contax catalogue of 1936, reprinted in Cyrillic.

At 135mm and f/4 it is slow and long, which suits a rangefinder with a 90mm base better than a faster lens would. It exists in Contax bayonet and in Leica thread.

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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-11 135mm f/4
Ibiza sunset — shot on a Jupiter-11 (AH AP) — AH AP, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Jupiter-11 135mm f/4
Sunset, Ibiza — Jupiter-11 (AH AP) — AH AP, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Jupiter-11 135mm f/4? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $99 across 28 fixed-price listings on 2026-10-19 (middle half $70–$130). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 10 days: down 1% from $100.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-10-19$99$70–$13028
2026-10-18$99$70–$13028
2026-10-17$99$70–$13028
2026-10-16$99$70–$13028
2026-10-15$99$65–$13028
2026-09-21$99$70–$13032
2026-09-19$100$75–$13031
2026-09-18$100$75–$13031
2026-09-11$100$75–$13097
2026-09-06$100$75–$13098

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

Show 52 more listings

Listings updated 2026-10-19. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Sonnar 13.5cm f/4 · Jupiter-9 85mm f/2

Sources (10)

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.