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I was dumb and sat up all night writing an effortpost about Soviet cameras. That was pretty dumb but then I posted it on my Tumblr (which is also dumb) and that meant that people couldn't really discuss anything or share their thoughts and suggestions. Which was the dumbest thing ever. So, I'm going to repost most of it here and that way, everyone can chip in. Ask questions, share your stories of Communist Gold, post photos and laugh as we spend very small amounts of money on shockingly primitive camera gear. Until fairly recently, I had one camera body, my trusty Canon 70D DSLR. It was an upgrade from a much older 350D and I was well set up for the usual camera gearnerd progression path of incrementally better bodies and a ballooning collection of glass. Recently though, my selection of cameras has expanded dramatically. Right now, I could grab any one of 11 different cameras sitting on shelves in my apartment. Almost all of these are enthusiast or ‘prosumer’ level machines and most of them cost me less than $50. Let’s start with a bit of history and an overview of the Soviet camera industry. Before WWII, the camera industry in the USSR was not well-developed. Mostly the factories producing cameras made very primitive view cameras in field or press camera formats. Here is my Fotokor 1 from 1931.  Compared to the output of German and American camera producers of the time, it was way behind the technology curve. The Soviets looked at the new 35mm Leica cameras and figured that they could do the same. So they did. By literally copying the design exactly. Well, almost exactly. It turns out that getting largely unskilled peasants to assemble precision optics in an orphanage (really!) doesn’t work as well as the highly-trained German workforce in their lovely, modern factories could manage. So the designs were modified over time to allow for the much looser tolerances and much less complex mechanicals. The first Soviet 35mm camera was the FED, which was made in Kharkiv in 1934 and was the first of many that were straight copies of Western equipment (in this case, the Leica II). The end of WWII put a real shot in the arm of the Soviet camera industry. A lot of German industry was in the East of the country and all of that was now Soviet controlled. The USSR gained access to all kinds of designs and patents as well as engineers, tools and manufacturing facilities. A lot of these were shipped off to the main centres of optical production in the USSR, the big camera factories at Krasnogorsk, Leningrad, Kharkiv and Kyiv all benefited from this captured tech. The Carl Zeiss facility in Jena, East Germany especially provided very advanced camera and lens technologies that were swiftly packed up and sent to Arsenalna and KMZ for local production. It’s important to note that Soviet brands aren’t necessarily the products of different factories. Nor are cameras of the same brand necessarily made by the same company. The KMZ factory near to Moscow for example, produced cameras with the Zorki, Zenit and Krasnogorsk brand names. But some Zenits were also made at the Vibrator factory in Leningrad and at the FED factory in Kharkiv. It’s possible to tell where a camera or lens was made because factories had their own symbol that was applied regardless of the brand-name. These two Mir lenses for example were each made in different factories. The one on the left is a 45mm f/3.5 lens for a Kiev medium format camera and was made at the Arsenalna factory in Kyiv. The one on the right is a 37mm f/2.8 lens for the m42 mount and was made at the Vologda factory in NW Russia. In both cases the factory mark can be seen at the 12 o’clock position of the lens.  So, after the war, the Soviet photography enthusiast had a surprisingly wide range of options available. Copies of the Leica II rangefinder were being produced by FED and Zorki - the two cameras were identical apart from branding at first but later designs diverged. In Kyiv, the Arsenalna factory was making copies of the Contax rangefinder as well as medium-format cameras copied from the Hasselblad 1600, and the GOMZ factory in Leningrad (which had previously been known as VOOMP and would later be called LOMO) was making copies of the Voigtländer Brillant TLR and pseudo-TLR cameras under the Lubitel brand name. While the Soviet industry relied heavily on copied Western designs at first, they certainly made their own innovations and later models deviated significantly from the original. The KMZ factory took one of their Zorki rangefinders and stuck a prism on top, a mirror in the lightbox and moved the lens mount forwards to allow for enough clearance from the mirror to make it into a 35mm SLR. That camera was the original Zenit which spawned an incredibly successful range of well-regarded SLRs. Body Talk The main 35mm brands and the most commonly encountered are FED, Zorki, Kiev and Zenit. FED cameras were made in an orphanage in Kharkiv for the most part except for a time during the war when the city was under German control and production moved to Krasnogorsk and a site in Siberia. The factory was set up specifically to copy the Leica II rangefinder and rangefinders were their main product until camera production stopped in 1997. Incidentally, the name FED is from the initials of Felix E Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, later to become the KGB). Think for a moment about that visual. The guy who created the NKVD put orphans to work in a factory making copied Nazi cameras. That's the kind of thing that Dickens would think up then go 'Nah, they'll never buy that' and start again. Most of their cameras used the Leica 39mm mount and usually shipped with either Industar or Jupiter lenses.  My 1974 FED 3 with an Industar 52mm f/2.8 lens.  My 1981 FED 5c from around 1979. Industar 55mm f/2.8 lens. Zorkis were produced at the KMZ factory at Krasnogorsk near to Moscow. Just as with FED, the brand started out producing copies of the Leica II and was associated primarily with rangefinders until production ended in 1978. The product line was much closer in general layout to the original Leica that spawned it when compared to the evolution of the FED.  My 1968 Zorki 4 with an Industar 50mm f/3.5 lens. The Zorki was such a good copy of the Leica that it’s often used as the basis for fakes. This ‘Luftwaffe Leica’ is actually a Zorki with a gold-coloured top plate and lens cap.  Kiev is far better known for their medium format cameras but the Arsenalna factory also produced rangefinders and SLRs as well as 16mm subminiature cameras, plus lenses for 35mm and medium format cameras under the Arsat, Volna and Mir brand names. The Kiev rangefinders were all derivatives of the Zeiss-Ikon Contax and the SLRs came from outer space. I don’t own a 35mm Kiev but here’s a Kiev 10 from 1965. Look at this thing!  I’ve seen several of these but the metal fan shutter blades (this is the only 35mm SLR with a fan shutter in the world), are very prone to breaking and finding one in working order is rare. Finally Zenit. These are probably the most common Soviet 35mm cameras. Millions were produced and many were exported too. The day I brought my Zenit-E home with me, I showed it to my concierge and he said “Oh, I’ve got one of those too!” They are everywhere. They were made in the KMZ factory along with the Zorkis and originally they used the same Leica 39mm lens mount. The Zenit E, introduced in 1965 used the m42 mount and this became the standard after that point. The last 39mm Zenit was the 3M which was produced until 1970. I have two Zenit Es and it is far and away my favourite Soviet 35mm camera. It’s a real joy to use and the Helios lens that was standard on many models is a really high-quality piece.  My 1978 Zenit-E with Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 lens. Not 35mm Stuff and Oddballs Probably the most well-known Soviet cameras are the medium format Kievs, the 60 and the 88. These are still very popular today because they allow an entry point to medium format photography at a fraction of the price of a Hasselblad or Mamiya body. The Kiev 88 is a copy of the 1948 Hasselblad and the Kiev 60 is based on the layout of the Pentacon Six but is quite different internally. Both were still in production until the Arsenalna factory closed in 2008.  My Kiev 88. This one is rebuilt from new stock by Arax Foto. Arsat 80mm f/2.8 lens. After the Kievs, the best known medium format Soviet cameras are probably the Lubitel TLRs. These were made at the GOMZ factory in Leningrad. The factory was later renamed LOMO (Leningrad Optical-Mechanical Union) and this is why low-fi hipster stuff is called Lomography. The cameras were originally direct copies of the Voigtländer Brillant and didn’t evolve very much from there. They were produced in huge numbers and show up regularly in flea-markets and vintage stores. Finding a good one will be hard because they were not well made even by Soviet camera standards. The bakelite casing of the earlier ones is prone to breaking and the metal parts on all models were not well protected against corrosion. Later versions included a lever and mask to switch between 6x6 and 6x4.5 frame sizes and that was about the limit of the innovation. Lubitel means “hobbyist” and these were intended as low-end, easy to use cameras. They aren’t especially easy to use however. The 120 film isn’t as user-friendly as 35mm cartridges and the focusing glass isn’t as convenient as a rangefinder window. In addition, everything has to be done manually, advancing the film doesn’t cock the shutter (or vice-versa) and setting the aperture and shutter speed is very fiddly.  I hope you like tiny control levers. A stereo version of the Lubitel was made called the Sputnik. It was produced in large numbers in the 1950s and 60s and shows up regularly in markets. The same problems exist with the regular Lubitel however, it is prone to corrosion and the bakelite shatters easily. I’ve looked at around half a dozen or so and not seen one that was in workable condition. Also, while accepting that Soviet retro-photography is a bit gimmicky already, Soviet retro stereo-photography is super-gimmicky.  Have a word with yourself. Seriously. Even I don’t have one of these. Kievs and Lubitels weren’t the only game in town for medium format enthusiasts. Factories in Leningrad and Krasnogorsk made large and medium format cameras of all types. The Fotokor camera I showed earlier is one such, and production of folding bellows cameras continued well after the war at the KMZ factory using the Moskva (Moscow) brand name. Mine is a Moskva 5 and can switch between 6x6 and 6x9 formats.  My 1958 Moskva 5. Industar 105mm f/3.5 lens. The Arsenalna factory also produced subminiature cameras from 1959 until around 1990. The first Kiev Vega was a silver coloured, all metal camera that originally used the Minolta 16mm cassette then the Vega 2 and the Kiev 30 diverged from the original more and more until the cassette was no longer compatible with the Minolta 110 standard, instead you had to spool film into the cartridge yourself before loading it into the camera. Because nothing says user-friendly like having to cut 35mm film to size and then fumble film and tape into a tiny plastic case in total darkness.  My Kiev 30. I’m never going to shoot this thing. Also, yes that is a flash-sync socket on the top. So Why Should I Care? Here’s the thing about Soviet cameras. They are cheap, really, really cheap compared to contemporary Japanese or European cameras. The most expensive camera in my collection is the Kiev 88 which I bought new from a company that rebuilds and upgrades the unsold factory stock. The cheapest one that I paid for (some were gifts) was about $5 and that was for a working but tatty Zenit that I bought for spare parts. Mostly the 35mm cameras cost me about $25-$40 each. I have never paid more than $40 for a lens. The cameras are mechanically very simple, which means that a brave soul with a set of jewellers screwdrivers and a lens wrench can probably fix any problems short of complete structural failure. It should mean that they are less prone to breaking but that’s actually the opposite of true as we’ll discuss later. Despite the low cost, there is some seriously good kit available. Especially in lenses. The Helios 44-2 lenses in particular have a cult following because they are based on the Carl-Zeiss Biotar system. This has the well-known side effect of producing swirly bokeh.  black cat 1of5 by LeadyGonzales, on Flickr Jupiter lenses for the M39 mount are also well regarded amongst vintage glass buffs and Arsat or Mir lenses are great medium format options. Some companies even offer Soviet medium format lenses with Canon, Nikon, Micro 4/3rds etc tilt-shift mounts to produce cut-price TS lenses for modern bodies. Adapters to use M42 or M39 lenses on modern cameras exist for a few dollars each, they are just mechanical adapters with no optical elements. Similar adapters exist to let you use older Kiev lenses on your Pentacon-6 or Hasselblad mount medium format camera. And let me tell you the prices for Arsat lenses are a lot friendlier than for Hasselblad glass.  You can see my test rolls from 35mm cameras in this Flickr album. The Downsides Even on pro-level Soviet stuff, the quality control was notoriously poor. Sitting in a damp attic for 30 years won’t have improved it any either. A lot of the Soviet gear I look at is practically useless. Quite often I see misaligned gears that have stripped themselves, seized controls or lens elements that rattle audibly when you try and focus. Light sealing is often patchy even on cameras in very good condition. Even when they were brand new, many cameras just plain didn’t work out of the box. There are many fairly hefty design flaws that don’t get corrected from model to model. Most Soviet cameras can be broken in a fairly terminal manner if you try to change the shutter speed when the shutter isn’t cocked for example. Also, I own about 8 lenses for m39 and m42 mount cameras and every goddamn one of them has a different filter thread size. Almost nothing is automated. Even by the standards of their time, the Soviet cameras were generally a long way behind the curve on technology. On many cameras cocking the shutter and winding the film on are separate actions. Quite a few have no automatic film counters and none that I know of have automatic winders. Self-timers are clockwork even on newer bodies and so are slower shutter speeds. Most cameras that have integrated lightmeters at all, have uncoupled lightmeters. That means you have to set the lightmeter and then transfer the settings to the camera manually. Or you would if the lightmeter worked. Most of them won’t any more because they are selenium based and the selenium degrades after about 10-15 years. When I shoot with mine, I tend to use my DSLR to meter the scene or just guess from the ‘sunny-16' rule. On the plus side, this all means you’ll be saving on batteries. Buying I’m very lucky because I live in a place where this stuff is plentiful, I can browse flea-markets, the used rack at camera stores and OLX (Russian eBay) for bargains. Usually I can check it out thoroughly before parting with money and many of the people I buy from will give me a good deal because they know me. Given the quality issues mentioned above, it’s really important that you have the opportunity to return anything you buy that isn’t working. Some of the stuff is cheap enough that you might not care too much, but still it’s easy to end up with a collection of paperweights rather than working camera gear. If you’re buying by internet, make sure that you are dealing with someone you trust to honour a returns policy and that you can see the exact thing you are buying in any photos. Incidentally, you can usually verify the date of Soviet equipment from the serial number. Commonly, the serial number was 9 or 10 digits with the first two being the date of manufacture. It’s not a universal rule and sometimes manufacturers changed their serial numbering schemes at intervals but if it looks like it could be the case, then it probably is. If you are after medium format cameras and equipment, I personally recommend Arax Foto. This company is one of a few that bought up all the unsold stock of the Arsenalna factory when it closed and rebuilt the better-made examples for a more consistent level of quality. In addition Arax installs a number of upgrades such as a mirror lock-up system, titanium shutters to replace the cloth originals and flocked interiors. They also rebuild Arsat lenses and multicoat the elements. I bought my Kiev 88 from there and I’ve been very happy with the camera and the service from the owner. Note that although the Kiev 88 is based on the Hasselblad, parts aren’t interchangeable between the two. So there’s no digital back that will fit it and film magazines aren’t compatible either. A lot of Soviet camera gear did get exported so it’s not unusual to see more common stuff like Lubitels or Zenits in antique stores or thrift shops in countries outside the former USSR. Sometimes brand names were changed for export versions but usually these will still have the Soviet factory logos that will match the original name. If you can buy directly in-person then take more than the usual amount of care in inspecting stuff before you buy. You’ll want to actuate everything several times to check that it moves smoothly. You’ll want to take the lens off and see what state the shutter is in and you’ll want to fire it a few times on a slow or bulb setting to see that it’s properly aligned. Lightmeters probably won’t work or will be way out of calibration. There’s not much to be done about that, maybe you feel brave enough to take your camera apart and try to fix it. Maybe you’ll just do what I do and forget that it exists at all. If you are a member of the Something Awful forums then this good-looking and extremely reliable poster will be happy to obtain and ship photo gear to you. Enjoy your new obsession. It really is worth it. Tell me about your Soviet gear. Or ask me about mine. Or ask me to buy some for you. Or whatever, I'm not your boss.
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Apr 16, 2016 13:13
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SMERSH Mouth posted:I've been looking at Zenits. Some of the early ones are really very nice looking IMO. E.g. I found a good guide to replacing selenium lightmeters with a solar cell on this site. You need to scroll down to the Zenit Repair Project in the left menu because this guy loves frames and a deeplink to the actual page just redirects back to his homepage. The chances of finding a replacement or donor with a working lightmeter are low. I've never dealt with Hartblei before but, if they are anything like Arax then they build to order so it might be a week or so before your camera is ready to ship and then it has to navigate the Ukrainian postal system. My experience of sending stuff out of here to the US is that it takes about 3 weeks for it to arrive. Packages coming in from the US commonly takes 2 months or more.
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Apr 17, 2016 17:00
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ansel autisms posted:Bumping with a low-effort post: I have a Fed Micron half frame and it's legitimately one of the best point & shoots I've ever owned. Does the lightmeter work? If not, how is the fully automatic exposure managing without it?
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Apr 20, 2016 02:18
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SMERSH Mouth posted:How is FED pronounced in the motherland? Like Cliven Bundy ranting about the "fed's", like Baron Harkonnen addresses his dear nephew "Feyd" (like "fade"), or (and I don't have a reference for this one) "fee ed" Fedd. It's the initials of Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky which in Russian are written as ФЭД. Russian is (almost) completely phonetic in spelling so fuh-ehh-duh makes FED.
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Apr 20, 2016 02:52
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mobby_6kl posted:My dad has a couple of soviet cameras from back in the day. One's a Zenith and the other is some sort of Lubitel or something that looks like it, it's been years since I last saw it. I remember shooting with the Zenith a bit when I was a kid, shooting fully manually was pretty fun even though I had a very basic understanding of how the exposure is supposed to work. I was particularly fond of the self-timer buzz when activated. All of the camera stores here that sell film will also develop it - 35mm, 120 and sheet film in both colour and black & white. One place takes a week, the other main place in town takes 3 days but I suspect that the first place is just sending a dude over to the second one with a courier bag every day. Regarding the self-timer buzz, almost all Soviet cameras are battery-free. The slow exposures are also regulated by clockwork so you get the same buzzing sound on anything slower than 1/2s. Helen Highwater fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Apr 21, 2016 |
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Apr 21, 2016 23:49
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I picked up two new cameras today. One is a present for a friend, a really beautiful Zorki (original model) from 1952. Came with the leather case, original box and 'passport' (which is basically a list of everything in the box, serial numbers, date of purchase etc). Works like a charm and features the pull-out Industar-22 50mm f/3.5 lens. Basically it's the original Soviet Leica II copy. I was amazed at how smooth everything was on this. Lens was very slightly marked but I don't think it will affect the pictures at all. I cleaned it up and it's a lovely, lovely thing to play with. Not bad for $60. 1952 Zorki by Iain Compton, on Flickr The other one is a shelf-sitter for now. I'll try working on it later and it may end up becoming a parts source. It's a Kiev 10 35mm SLR from 1973 and it's in pretty bad shape. It's obviously been dropped at some point, the aperture selector wheel (on the camera body) doesn't engage with the lens and the fan-shutter needs to be realigned. It's a beastly machine though, it's very solid feeling in my hands, weighs around a kilo and looks like something from Barbarella. Physically it's about the same size as my 70D (if you ignore the handgrip bulge) but maybe 3-4cm longer.  It's an automatic camera that doesn't need batteries. If you set the aperture wheel to A, then it's basically a shutter priority camera. The selenium lightmeter provides metering in the viewfinder as well as modifying the aperture. It uses special lenses with a mount that's not compatible with any other camera system. Mine has a Helios-81 50mm f/2 lens attached. A decently wide range of lenses were available but the camera couldn't use any of the more popular m42 or m39 mount optics. This was actually the worlds' first automatic SLR, and for its time, it was cutting edge.  Despite the fact that cloth or titanium curtain shutters worked just fine on every other camera in the world, the Arsenalna engineers decided to put a metal fan shutter in the 10. It's inevitably the Achilles' heel of the model as it's super-complex and easy to break. Mine works but the fan blades need to be adjusted as there's a big gap after the shutter closes. Everything else, including the selenium meter seems to work however. 
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May 3, 2016 18:06
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DJExile posted:drat that Kiev10 is enormous, that rules. It's huge. Here are some comparison shots.  L-R: Zenit-E, Canon 70D, Kiev 10.  
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May 3, 2016 19:04
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I figured I'd always use the prism on my 88 because of the TTL metering, but I've found that the wlf is just much more handy to use and makes for a nicer shooting experience. The fact that it weighs about a tenth of the prism is a bonus.
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May 4, 2016 07:26
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Found on OLX (Russian eBay) for ~$30. Talked the guy down to $20 because he wanted to haggle even though I was entirely fine with giving him the full price. 1969 Kiev 10. Helios-81 50mm f/2 automatic lens. by Iain Compton, on Flickr Unlike the one I bought a few weeks ago, this one is in perfect condition. It meters, the automatic lens mechanism works, the fan shutter is properly aligned and it's still in the box with all of its accessories. There's a super ugly ever-ready case, a nice, all metal-cable-release, an adapter to use m39 lenses, rear cap for the lens, 1/4-3/8"tripod adapter and an OC12 filter for when you want your space-age, avant-garde camera to take black and white pictures.
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May 15, 2016 17:59
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chitoryu12 posted:I'll upload a pic when I've got a free computer, but I just got a Smena 8M in what appears to be good condition with a nearly perfect LOMO case in the mail. I was given one of those yesterday. Looks like fun but I doubt I'll ever use mine. It doesn't have a regular film spool, you feed the film into an empty cartridge and it basically works like 120 film where the spool (cartridge in this case) from the last roll becomes the take-up spool (cartridge) for the next roll. As film doesn't come in re-usable cartridges any more, I'm not sure how to deal with that. There's no rewinder on the camera either. I went to the flea markets today to get some stuff to ship to Goons and ended up with three new cameras. One was a lovely, and beat-up FED-2 for $5 that works but looks tatty. The only thing mechanically wrong with it is the timer mechanism doesn't work. I can see where the spring has popped out of the casing inside so that might be a weekend fixer-upper project. I did however score this amazing piece of work.  1970 KMZ Horizont. Panoramic 35mm camera. by Iain Compton, on Flickr It's a panoramic camera. Each shot takes two 35mm frames. The film is loaded over a curved track and the lens is in a rotating drum. It's a 28mm lens pre-focused to infinity - there's no viewfinder, rangefinder or prism to frame or focus with. The lens stops down from f/2.8 to f/16 and your choice of shutter speeds is 1/125. 1/60 or 1/30. Mine was made in 1970 at the KMZ factory, the home of Zenit and Zorki. I'm definitely going to try it out when I'm in Slovakia next week. I can't wait to climb to the top of the Sv Alzbety Dom in Kosice and see what the view is like from up there. The other camera I got was a boxed and as-new Kiev 60 with all the accessories - filters, macro rings, wlf, ttl prism, carrying case and so forth. Unfortunately it's not a good example of the breed and serves as a good illustration of the fact that even brand new cameras often didn't work right out of the box. In this case, the shutter mechanism doesn't always engage properly when cocking. There's also fungus inside the Volna-3 80mm f/2.8 lens. I can probably fix the shutter and I have an identical lens for my Kiev 88 but I asked Arax for a quote to fix them both and, if it's less than about $100 I'll do that rather than risk loving it up myself.  1991 Kiev 60. Volna-3 80mm f/2.8 lens. by Iain Compton, on Flickr
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May 18, 2016 20:59
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DJExile posted:oh my god I love this It's pretty rad. I've been playing with the mechanism constantly since I got it. The 'curtain' is a vertical slit at the back of the drum that has a variable width depending on the shutter speed. The rotational speed of the drum is constant regardless of settings.
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May 20, 2016 16:16
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SMERSH Mouth posted:OK so here's a completely idiotic question. Do conventional (horizontal, cloth, focal plane) shutter curtains move at variable speeds? After spending way to long watching the shutter action of my old kiev-60, trying to figure out what to do about its shutter capping at 1/1000, I'd want to say that the curtains always move at a constant (very fast, near instant) rate, and it's only the timing of the second curtain's release that causes variation in exposure time. I'm very sure that this is the case. Not only is it much easier to build that kind of system (you don't need variable tension springs or weirdness like that), you;d also want the shutter to open and close very fast to avoid banding. FWIW, I 'solved' the limited shutter speed options on my Kiev 88 with ND filters.
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May 20, 2016 23:54
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Today's valuable acquisition is a 1988 Zenit 12FS. Which would be a fairly dull late-Soviet 35mm SLR except that the FS in the name stands for FotoSnaiper. It's a camera that is guaranteed to get you shot by the police if you try and use it, and taken aside for some TSA funtimes if you ever try and travel with it. The idea is pretty sound, the KMZ factory which made the massively popular line of Zenit cameras, also made the Tair 300mm lens which is ideal for taking pictures of distant wildlife. It's lovely and sharp, 300mm gets you right close to the action and it opens relatively wide (f/4.5) for a lens of its vintage. The bad news is that the thing weighs about 4 kilos. Not only is that a lot for a photographer to try and keep steady, it's also a lot for the lens ring on the camera body to support. So some bright spark in Krasnogorsk came up with the idea of mounting the camera and lens onto a rifle stock. The camera is specially adapted so that it can be triggered from a pin underneath the body as well as by the usual top-mounted shutter-button and the lens has a unique underbarrel focus control. It comes in a specially designed box with a bunch of accessories including a filter set, a 52mm f/2 lens (the same one that came with almost every other Zenit camera) and a folding stock (really!) Mine is complete, works perfectly but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to try using it.  1988 Zenit 12 Fotosnaiper by Iain Compton, on Flickr
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Sep 19, 2016 19:42
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I just discovered that the 'Kiev bayonet mount' as found on later 35mm Kiev SLRs is exactly the same as the Nikon mount. That means I can try some nice glass on my Kiev 19 and see what I get out of it. I have a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 and I checked the fit so I'll make some tests with it this weekend.
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Oct 1, 2016 17:33
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Svema also made colour film. Their Wikipedia entry only mentions black and white, but you can find a lot of expired 120 and 135 Svema colour film on eBay still. They also made cinefilm and magnetic media. A friend of mine in Ukraine runs a video production unit attached to the Ministry of Culture and they have a poo poo-ton of old Soviet movie cameras and film stock. Svema is the name on most of those boxes. ORWO in the DDR had the original Agfa plant and processes which they sold in the Soviet bloc under the Agfa brand at first, and then under their own name later when they wanted to export to the West. Again, they made colour films including cine and sheet film as well as most popular rollfilm variants.
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Dec 19, 2016 16:13
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Mine has the metal shutter. It was a no-cost upgrade when I ordered it. I can't speak to it being more accurate than the cloth shutter but it feels about right for whatever that's worth and exposures that have been metered with my DSLR work when transferred to the 88. I have picked it up few times with the magazine off and put my thumb on the shutter accidentally without incident - with a cloth shutter, I'm sure I'd have poked a hole in it. Sounds like a train crash when it closes though, you definitely need the mirror lockup if you get the metal shutter. You can't avoid banding under certain conditions (lots of light, fast shutter) with such a big frame whether it's metal or otherwise. Gevorg at Arax says it helps but it won't solve the problem which is baked into the design. It's a big part of why Hasselblad stopped offering 1600 and 1000 speeds on their V system cameras.
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Dec 19, 2016 22:49
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The portfolio site thread is archived and I don't think it's worth starting a new one, but I added the initial content to my new photo-blog. Mostly it's an excuse for me to talk about my collection of Soviet cameras but hopefully it will become more of a resource for me to point potential collaborators at and to showcase how terrible my photos are. I'd appreciate any feedback (telling me to take better pictures won't work however) and maybe people might be interested to read some hands-on impressions of various cameras. Gear pages are here. I still have some sample images to post for a few cameras in the collection and I might add some video of me talking about specific gear if I get around to it.
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Jan 7, 2017 14:25
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People still want nice things even in a centrally planned economy. Just that in a centrally planned economy, there are fewer choices because there's not much point in having overlapping production when you are running all of the options. So each FSU 'brand' serviced a particular niche and the factories used the experience of developing consumer products to improve their parallel military output. The only place that there was much of a choice was at the ultra low end, and that was due to the requirement to spread production around to cover the higher demand for cheaper ranges. On top of that, the USSR needed to export a fairly large chunk of its output to have access to foreign currencies like the US dollar. Official policy was to only export low-end goods that were in surplus which is why there are so many Zenits, Lubitels and FEDs in junk shops outside the FSU but not so many 35mm Kievs.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:24
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 22:42 |
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The Soviets made Leica clones before WWII, the first FEDs were straight copies of the Leica 2 and were built from 1934. The first Zorki was a FED copy built because the Ukrainan FED factory couldn't handle demand after getting flattened by the Nazis. Turns out that Uncle Joe and his buddies couldn't give a poo poo about Western patent protections. Most of the post-war FSU lenses were straight up stolen from CZJ once the Soviet troops 'liberated' Jena and Dresden and got access to all the tooling and the engineers who designed them. Soviet factories did innovate from time to time, but resources were strictly controlled and the military output of each factory had priority so most of the engineers just kept the civilian lines going with incremental improvements over time. Occasionally they got the instruction from above to pull out the stops for some trade show project to demonstrate Soviet superiority and you get a thing like the Kiev 10 or the Horizon.
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Mar 23, 2017 15:01
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