There are many lens manufacturers in the world. Many are well-known and trusted because they also make camera bodies; many are well-established aftermarket lens manufacturers, some are less well-known. Among the latter are the Russian lens brands. Although well loved among the knowledgeable professionals and amateurs, they are mostly unknown to the 'general public'.

The Russian optical industry has a long history and much has been written about it. A lot of the designs originated at the Zeiss factory which was part of the occupied East Germany, some were developed in Russia. An important part of understanding the origin of the high quality of Russian optics is that most of the civilian industry in the USSR was a byproduct of the military research, and much of the technology which went into the Russian photo optics was developed to the military standards.

Most of the old Russian lenses will have an M42 (screw) mount. With a proper adapter, these can be easily mounted on many cameras, including Canon and Pehtax. Of course, they will be all-manual but that is half the fun.

Some have been released with more modern mounts. Among the currently manufactured models are the 8mm Peleng and 16mm Zenitar, available for most modern mounts.

Of the K (Pentax lenses), two come to mind: the Mir-47K amd Helios-44K-4. While I have no personal experience with the Mir-47K, the Helios is certainly one of my favourite lenses. It is extremely sharp and probably better suited to black and white photography, especially indoors.

Most other Russian SLR lenses you see will be M42 or M39 screwmounts. There are adapters for mounting M42 lenses on Pentax, Canon and even Nikon bodies, although with Nikon you will lose the ability to focus to infinity.

Here are very brief comments on the Russian lenses I own:

Helios-44K-4 (58mm 1:2): As I said above, one of my favourites. Extremely sharp, perhaps too sharp for portraits except really extreme ones, or portraits of kids with perfect skin. Excellent all-around lens otherwise.

Helios-40-2 (85mm 1:1.5): My favourite portrait lens by far. Very heavy but produces beautiful, sharp, smooth images.

Jupiter-9 (85mm 1:2): a very compact, fast portrait lens (almost as small as a Pentax 50mm). Excellent image quality but not quite as magical s the Helios-40-2. This is the portrait lens to travel with.

Mir-20M (20mm 1:3.5): looks like a funnel and quite heavy. Beautiful colour and sharp. Some distortion but not very noticeable outdoors, more so indoors where the walls or other vertical lines are visible.

Industar-61 L/Z (50mm 1:2.8): Almost a macro lens, focuses down to about 30mm. In my experience, not as razor-sharp as other macro lenses I have tried but has a very pleasing image quality, perhaps better suited to flower photos than, for example, insects.

Mir-1V (37mm 1:2.8): a pleasant lens to use, nice colours but not a lens I am passinate about. Perhaps the least used piece in my Russian glass collection. Nice enough but just not enough "character".

Perhaps in the future I will write a series of guides on each of those lenses, with pictures of both the lense themselves and sample images.