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Superior Soviet Sputnik Technology!
- Thread starter desantnik
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excalibur2
My F4's Broken...
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- Brian
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...and don't forget party members got the lenses that past better quality control (the peasants got the rubbish)...e.g. IIRC Helios 44-2 lenses the serial numbers began with "00".
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- Samuel
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If you want the 'best' in Soviet rangefinders then the ultimate one is the KMZ Kometa (Comet) which was a demonstration camera at the 1958 World Exhibition
The designers were told to show the World that the Soviet Union could produce excellent cameras and as so they incorporated everything practically including a new Bayonet mount and semi-automatic exposure with a selenium cell. If it had actually been released it would have been the first camera to feature semi-automatic exposure and inter-changeable lenses of which several were shown. It actually outperformed the Leica M3 and the camera Contax were showing on several points.
Sadly only 2 are known to exist as it was never meant to be produced as it didn't fit the Soviet system of a 'planned' economy. One is with a collector and the others location is unknown. There is an incomplete third one as well. To add insult to injury, the original production plans, diagrams etc are lost or destroyed as well.
See here for more details:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zenit.istra.ru%2Farchive%2Fkometa%2Findex.html&sl=ru&tl=en
Theres a review here as well from the West:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zenit.istra.ru%2Farchive%2Fkometa%2Findex.html&sl=ru&tl=en
If you want the best, get one
The designers were told to show the World that the Soviet Union could produce excellent cameras and as so they incorporated everything practically including a new Bayonet mount and semi-automatic exposure with a selenium cell. If it had actually been released it would have been the first camera to feature semi-automatic exposure and inter-changeable lenses of which several were shown. It actually outperformed the Leica M3 and the camera Contax were showing on several points.
Sadly only 2 are known to exist as it was never meant to be produced as it didn't fit the Soviet system of a 'planned' economy. One is with a collector and the others location is unknown. There is an incomplete third one as well. To add insult to injury, the original production plans, diagrams etc are lost or destroyed as well.
See here for more details:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zenit.istra.ru%2Farchive%2Fkometa%2Findex.html&sl=ru&tl=en
Theres a review here as well from the West:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zenit.istra.ru%2Farchive%2Fkometa%2Findex.html&sl=ru&tl=en
If you want the best, get one
OP
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Indeed, the forthcoming "show trial of the camera kulaks" will see the end to these matters.
Former-comrade Pepper, pack your bags for a long cold holiday!
OP
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To be very serious for just a second, people do like to rubbish Soviet design and manufacturing but they were very capable of producing outstanding pieces of equipment and technologies but only when they needed to.
And thats the key, it was good when it needed to be good. If it didn't need to be good, the resources were not expended on it.
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Apparently there were two sides of the KMZ factory, on one side thousands of consumer cameras with questionable quality control were produced by fairly unskilled workers. I heard somewhere that the company that imported the Soviet cameras into Britain, tested every single one and about 25 - 45% or something were rejected and when the flight with the new cameras came from the USSR, when it went back it took the rejects back to the motherland!
One thing that didn't help though was that all the Zenit cameras were deliberately made in one piece so an unskilled worker could just pour in the molten metal into the mould and there you were. Leica tried a camera in one piece in the 50's and rejected so many prototypes that they gave up. That was the main problem with the simple one piece construction, every week the scrapheap at KMZ would be full of cameras gone wrong in the casting.
On the other side of KMZ however optics and cameras were manufactured for the military and the space program. These were usually exceptionally high quality. It was a KMZ made lens that took the first picture of the dark side of the moon.
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The Lomo Lenningrad is the most interesting camera of the ones above.
Its clockwork!
Wind it up and take your pictures.
There is however one slight problem when it comes to developing. and getting the photos printed.
Namely there is no border between the photographs, they come out in one long piece
Automatic landscaping is the order of the day.
Its clockwork!
Wind it up and take your pictures.
There is however one slight problem when it comes to developing. and getting the photos printed.
Namely there is no border between the photographs, they come out in one long piece
Automatic landscaping is the order of the day.
Ambermile
A Whole Lot of Sparkle..
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- Arthur
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Here it is then, a little larger but the clockwork bit would account for that... sadly it's a 1983 model rather than a 1981 first-run so has the standard Industar lens and not the sexy triplet Nice camera though and surprisingly well-made too
Arthur
Nice camera though and surprisingly well-made too
Arthur