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Before you buy a Soviet Camera

kosmofoto.com

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Re: Before you buy a Soviet Camera

#41

Post by mitjak »

cesaref wrote: post #36
mitjak wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But then digital happened and both lenses and sensors outgrew anything analog. maybe if you can afford an 80MP digital back with MF lenses? i still prefer 35mm compared to full-frame sensors but i'm more after latitude and colour rendition than sharpness.

if you live 35mm film you'll love medium format. It's much more forgiving due to less enlargement when printing, the trade off is that the equipment is large (although some of the fuji rangefinders aren't that much bigger than modern 35mm SLRs).

i work with MF too. im just saying the argument of "digital came and made analog irrelevant" doesn't really apply for me where I personally prefer 35mm over digital, let alone MF where you have "megapixels for days"

Re: Before you buy a Soviet Camera

#42

Post by [deleted] »

iSnow wrote: post #37
mitjak wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But then digital happened and both lenses and sensors outgrew anything analog. maybe if you can afford an 80MP digital back with MF lenses? i still prefer 35mm compared to full-frame sensors but i'm more after latitude and colour rendition than sharpness.

God, I'd love to have a digital back for a medium format camera. But those are incredibly expensive, there's no way I can justify that.

[deleted]

Re: Before you buy a Soviet Camera

#43

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #18

> Soviet factories built their cameras to a different philosophy to those in the West. If a West German or Japanese camera model proved unpopular, the plug was pulled. In the USSR, a factory might be told to build 250,000 of one design over the next five years, and until they were told different, that’s what they did. ... > “But when the manufacturing started things often went wrong. FED, Arsenal, BelOMO, other facto…

> "But when the development started things often went wrong. Frontend, backend, dev-ops and other teams, had to crank out hundreds of thousands of Jira tickets, and their quantity, not quality, were the only thing that counted. To meet a quota, teams could substitute senior devs for more juniors, skip testing steps to speed up agile velocity – the list goes on.”

Re: Before you buy a Soviet Camera

#44

Post by eigenhombre »

TomMasz wrote: post #20

I've got a Zorki 4 rangefinder (works well), a Kiev-6C (variable frame spacing, loud AF), a Moskva 5 (Rube Goldberg-inspired rangefinder but otherwise okay), a Lubitel 166U (what's "edge sharpness"?), and now a Zenit-19M (Nikon mount, solid, reputation for wildly inaccurate metering). They're not finely-crafted machines, but if you get one that works they do fine for cameras built 40+ years ago.

I got two Moskva 5's on eBay more than a decade ago, and learned a ton about photography using them. No light meter, crappy viewfinder were the downsides, but it provided two frame sizes (6x6 / 6x9) for the negative, which gives so much more detail than 35mm. Also fits in a (very large) pocket... finally, it's just a very beautiful, if fairly simple, piece of equipment. Photography can seem like high-tech magic but when you strip away the bells and whistles and learn how to estimate exposures with simple math based on light conditions and film ISO, it feels much more elemental and was quite fun.

I still have a few rolls of 120 film in the fridge but no idea where I'd get them developed anymore.

Re: Before you buy a Soviet Camera

#45

Post by buserror »

I've got at least a dozen soviet film cameras; Zorki 1s (one of my favourite), Zorki 3's (and the "crown" of the collection, the 3c). I've got a Zorki 1 that is /at least/ as smooth as my Leica IIIc, it is incredibly smooth. These are easy to fix, easy to maintain and with a bit of care (and understanding how to use the TINY rangefinder) you can make fantastic images.

One camera the article doesn't mention is the Iskra. It's a "folding" 6x6 medium format camera that is probably the best I've seen in terms of quality. Problem is, finding a good one is tough, as it was very complex (it was a copy of Agfa Isolette) -- very often the cameras are completely worn out due to use over so many years. If you find one that works, you are SUPER lucky. I bought 5 to get 2 working, but it's worth the money, the lens is spectacular, and being medium format, a scan of that will compare to even modern cameras.

Another camera that is not mentioned is the more modern "panoramic" camera Horizont that use a rotating shutter to give you a fantastic panoramic view with correct verticals! This one is a marvel really, I made fantastic pictures with mine.

There is a lot of fun to be had with these cameras; there are also dozens and dozens of lens that are worth playing with!

Re: Before you buy a Soviet Camera

#46

Post by miahi »

gambiting wrote: post #27
rvba wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designs were sound since they were stolen by KGB from the West.

I mean..........urgh. It's an unbelivably convoluted topic and I feel like just dismissing it as "stolen by KGB from the West" is simply unfair. Yes, a lot of designs were simply copied from western equivalents. But also a lot of designs weren't, or were actually improvements over western designs in some crucial ways(washing machines being overbuilt because repairs were unlikely, so certain components were upgraded t…

There was no need for KGB to steal everything, as they already had good optics; the Zeiss factories were moved to Russian-controlled teritories during the Second World War[1], including workers.

[1] http://www.novacon.com.br/lenses08.htm

Re: Before you buy a Soviet Camera

#47

Post by extropy »

gambiting wrote: post #12
rob74 wrote: post #9

“There were several cameras I bought, boxed and with factory seals and signed certificates of worthiness, and yet when opened revealed a camera which could never work,” says Javier. Next paragraph: "Why did the myth about the low quality of Soviet cameras appear?" Errr... am I missing something here? Sounds pretty obvious to me?

It's mentioned in the Zenit-E review[0]: "Most Soviet camera designs were perfectly sound – it was more often that the construction itself was lacking. TOE engineers learned on the assembly line, then went back to the UK and stripped and reassembled every single camera that came into the UK." I grew up in Poland and my dad said the exact same thing - that when he was young, if you managed to somehow buy yourself a br…

This, used to do this with everything back in the day.

Cameras, bicycles, furniture, you name it. The thing would right out not work or just fall apart in a few days because loose screws.

20 Y later I still have the urge to take brand new things apart just to check if everything is a-ok.

Re: Before you buy a Soviet Camera

#48

Post by hef19898 »

prionassembly wrote: post #7

I have a few soviet cameras. What stands out the most is their sheer heft. I have a Fed-4, a Fed-5, a Lubitel and three original, marked-in-cyrillic Lomo LC-As (not the clone Lomography Inc. marketed later). When I was doing film photography I also used to have a Diana (shitty but on purpose Chinese 120/medium-format camera) and a (mystery Russian beyond my ability to read Cyrillic) medium-format camera that needed a…

Something I always liked about Nikons was the weight. Arguably a long time ago, back when a Nikon F4 was top notch, I used my dad's F4 a lot. I also used a friends Canon EOS 1, I always feared to brake the EOS 1 by touching it. The F4 could be used as a hammer, so.

No idea if this is still true today, I still like a camera I feel in my hands.

Now I want to try out a sovjet one. Once I also used a Leica, courtesy of a local camera shop that lend to my Dad, for a project in my last year of school (back in 2000). Nice piece of kit, but what really stood out were the lenses. That didn't justify the price tag, so. Stull a nice camera, a Leica.

Re: Before you buy a Soviet Camera

#50

Post by kevinstubbs »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #43
gwbas1c wrote: post #18

> Soviet factories built their cameras to a different philosophy to those in the West. If a West German or Japanese camera model proved unpopular, the plug was pulled. In the USSR, a factory might be told to build 250,000 of one design over the next five years, and until they were told different, that’s what they did. ... > “But when the manufacturing started things often went wrong. FED, Arsenal, BelOMO, other facto…

> "But when the development started things often went wrong. Frontend, backend, dev-ops and other teams, had to crank out hundreds of thousands of Jira tickets, and their quantity, not quality, were the only thing that counted. To meet a quota, teams could substitute senior devs for more juniors, skip testing steps to speed up agile velocity – the list goes on.”

It's a comical comparison, but do any companies actually measure progress like this without even looking at the end result? Presumably if velocity stays high but everything is broken, somebody will say something (and hopefully not just continue with the broken process that produced the problem).
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