[HN Gopher] Before you buy a Soviet Camera
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Before you buy a Soviet Camera
Author : brudgers
Score : 154 points
Date : 2021-02-28 02:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (kosmofoto.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kosmofoto.com)
| a-dub wrote:
| no mention of the krasnogorsk k-3! one of the cheapest and most
| popular 16mm non sync movie cameras around...
| rob74 wrote:
| "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?
| gambiting wrote:
| 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
| brand new Soviet motocrycle, fresh from the factory, the very
| first thing you did was disassemble the whole thing to bits,
| lubricate, and reassemble everything at correct torques and in
| correct places. Then you could go and safely use it.
|
| [0]https://kosmofoto.com/2018/12/zenit-e-russian-camera-review/
| rvba wrote:
| Designs were sound since they were stolen by KGB from the
| West.
| gambiting wrote:
| 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 to last
| longer). Soviets(and the rest of the Eastern block) had
| plenty of brilliant, incredibly skilled and competent
| engineers and designers and thinkers, and they all did the
| best with what they had access to. It's a topic worthy of
| tomes of literature.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _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._
|
| Yep. The article even mentions that initial designs for
| some of these cameras were taken as war reparations in
| the aftermath of WWII. I suppose Leica might see that as
| theft, but it was hardly KGB espionage.
| miahi wrote:
| 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
| raducu wrote:
| A lot more designs than were stolen by the west from the
| west or non-existant designs stolen from the east by the
| west.
|
| The parent comentator has a valid point, the East usually
| copied good designs from the West.
|
| Which they could improve.
| b06tmm wrote:
| I had a teacher in the early '90s that said the Japanese
| were the best at reinventing things. They would take
| something, study it, and remake them better.
| mepian wrote:
| You are underestimating the Soviet engineers.
| rvba wrote:
| Best Soviet engineers were designing military planes, not
| household appliances.
| [deleted]
| flyinghamster wrote:
| And one of the funny things I've noticed over the years is
| that often, the technology that was stolen (or sometimes
| legitimately transferred) from the west often more-or-less
| failed, or was superseded, in western markets. In the
| railway sphere, Alco and Fairbanks-Morse diesel engine
| designs dominated, long after they disappeared from
| American rails. Turning to home computers, many 1980s
| Soviet home computers were PDP-11 clones. Modern Ural
| motorcycles are a result of technology transfer from BMW
| dating to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I have a Soviet fountain pen along the same model as the
| Parker 21/51. I've had three 21s develop a crack in the
| same place as the cheap plastic becomes very brittle with
| age, but no such issue with its Soviet twin. The Soviet
| one also uses a more old-fashioned button filler
| mechanism that holds more ink than the Parker's
| aerometric bladder. I used it a lot for note-taking in
| school.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Ural motorcycles are really the opposite, though- an
| example of the transfer of a technology that was very
| successful in the West. Yes, BMW iterated on the R71 and
| the R75 was more advanced than the M-72, but that
| technology didn't fail and neither was it superseded (at
| least not more abruptly than any other).
| extropy wrote:
| 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.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| >Odd, then, that the entirety of a photographic industry spread
| across the largest country ever formed and spanning more than 60
| years can get judged off first impressions.
|
| A lot of people come judge anything out of the Soviet Union off
| that first word.
| person_of_color wrote:
| Love these cameras. The Agat 18k is a marvel!
| prionassembly wrote:
| 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 tripod out of how heavy it
| was. Finally, I had a consumer-grade Canon.
|
| The Feds weighed like double what the Canon packed with two extra
| lenses did. LC-As are not that heavy, but the front-panel is
| finicky and I feel pained to put the thing in a backpack. As it
| turns out, the cameras I take out the most are (Chinese) Vivitar
| Ultra-Wide and Slim and the unmarked fixed-focus camera my family
| usedwhen I was a child.
|
| Before you buy a Soviet camera: these things are heavy!
|
| Edit: reading the comments I remembered another two: an Agat
| half-frame camera and another one I-can't-read-the cyrllic-from
| half-frame that has a huge thick light sensor around the lens and
| so it has auto-exposure. The former is plastic and not too heavy
| (but the exposure controls are hard to use, and because it's a
| half-frame it can't be as forgiving as the wide-aperture lenses
| in fixed-focus cameras). The latter is heavier than my laptop, I
| think!
| hef19898 wrote:
| 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.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Around 2000 there were deals to be had on eBay.. Somewhere in the
| last 20 years or so the Lomography fad and general internet
| consciousness about soviet "copy" cameras got ahead of the value.
|
| Even then I usually had to buy 2 cameras to cobble together 1
| good working camera, but at least they were cheap.
|
| Since then there's been enough people marking them up beyond
| their value or recycling the same broken cameras over and over.
|
| Lenses may be a better bet as there are less moving parts and
| they are to some degree more easily re-adjusted by a competent
| repair person.
| m463 wrote:
| The headline seemed to be a warning, so I immediately wondered if
| this was about another source of radioactive lenses.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoriated_glass
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > 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 factories, had to crank out hundreds
| of thousands of cameras and lenses, and their quantity, not
| quality, were the only thing that counted. To meet a quota
| factories could substitute brass parts for aluminium, skip
| calibration steps to speed up assembly - the list goes on."
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| > "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."
| kevinstubbs wrote:
| 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).
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| You'd be surprised how many companies have totally broken
| software development process.
|
| Basically most companies where software isn't the core
| product and moneymaker (semiconductors, automotive, 100
| year old german companies, etc).
|
| Remember how the compilation time of Nokia's Symbian OS was
| _two weeks_?
|
| As long as money keeps rolling in nobody cares that your
| development process is totally whack and your promotions as
| a dev come not from seeking to improve things but from
| learning these idiosyncratic process and saying yes to
| whatever your boss says. Ask me how I know.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Judging by the results, anything outsourced by a European
| government (at any level) to one of the large, useless
| companies like Accenture, IBM, Capgemini, etc.
| skratlo wrote:
| > compete with the best of the West
|
| > Soviet cameras appealed to a huge swathe of photographers with
| a limited budget
|
| Whoever wrote this has zero respect. Some wannabe west superior
| looser. It's too bad, it could have been a nice article, but
| these remarks turned it into utter garbage.
| notdang wrote:
| I agree with the article, I was one of those photographers with
| a limited budget. The Zenit-E was prohibitively expensive for
| me, it was like a 3/4 of a monthly salary at that time. Where
| the article is not accurate?
| markoa wrote:
| I was lucky to inherit a Zenit camera with a macro lens. I have
| been shooting with it for ~10 years now and am still mesmerized
| by the photos it creates. My old Flickr page has a couple of
| examples: https://flickr.com/photos/manastasov/4985941953/
| flyinghamster wrote:
| I had an East German camera (a Praktica) for a short while; my
| aunt brought it with her from England. Seeing the comments about
| Soviet build quality, I'd note that it also applies to Soviet
| satellites as well.
|
| The lens was wonderful, but it didn't take many rolls of film for
| the shutter to give out. I switched to a Minolta SRT202 after
| that, before I ditched film for digital. I suppose I could have
| gone with a Pentax K-1000 and kept the lens, since it was the
| same screw mount.
| brudgers wrote:
| The K1000 has the K Bayonet mount that superseded the m42 screw
| mount on Pentax 35mm SLR's in the 1970's.
|
| However, my understanding is Soviet designs used both mounts.
| Just clarifying not arguing. Out of a fondness for Pentax and
| tendency to geek.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I judge Soviet quality off of the 20 or so Mosins I've shot.
| Sounds very similar to their cameras, but at least the rifles are
| more fun.
| overcastsky wrote:
| As a former military man myself, I found that Soviet rifles (AK
| pattern) and even the RPK were far more robust and trustworthy
| than the fragile Swiss-watch approach of the American
| M-16A2/M4/M249 series of rifles. Many people preferred them,
| even some of the junior officers who carried them around, but
| for them, it more of a badge of office (look at me) since they
| were armed with handguns as well.
| Daho0n wrote:
| Just add some dirt to those M-16A2/M4/M249 and suddenly the
| AK/RPK is a lot more fun. Especially if your life depends on
| it.
| maurits wrote:
| Old soviet lenses, like the helios, can be lots of fun and fit
| relatively easily on a mirrorless camera.
|
| The Chinese Holga is also a magnificent piece of plastic.
|
| See Mathieu Stern for inspiration. [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYX22a35sKhA0T6ee7uZfvg
| michrassena wrote:
| The cameras are so-so, but the lenses for the most part have
| kept up with their reputation of having excellent optics. I
| don't think I can put them ahead of any contemporary lenses
| from Japanese top-tier manufacturers, nor would I pay a
| premium. But like a lot of Eastern Bloc equipment, they
| represent an interesting alternative universe of technology.
| dhosek wrote:
| I've got a Holga that I won in a raffle when my wife was in the
| photography program at Santa Monica College. One of these days
| I'm gonna track down some film for it and actually take some
| pictures (and then find somewhere I can get the film
| developed).
| michrassena wrote:
| Not difficult at all to get film from Freestyle Photo, or
| B&H, Adorama or any other company online which sells 120
| film. I'm sure there's somewhere near you which will allow
| you to send the film for development.
| pawelk wrote:
| I have three Soviet lenses (Helios 58/2, Mir 37/2.8, Jupiter
| 135/3.5). My father got them in early 1980s with a Zenit
| camera. I then used them with an analog Canon EOS, then Canon
| DSLR and now on a mirrorless EOS-M. I went trough dozens
| dedicated AF lenses (Canon and 3rd party) but these three have
| always been with me and I'm not going to give them up. As you
| said, lots of fun.
| buserror wrote:
| 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!
| TomMasz wrote:
| 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.
| eigenhombre wrote:
| 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.
| lecarore wrote:
| Archive.org version :
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210228023629/https://kosmofoto...
| chiffre01 wrote:
| I've had a Fed 2 rangefinder with a 50mm Industar lens I bought
| in Russia 10 years ago, I still use it from time to time. It's
| been a great camera, but film's getting too expensive to develop.
| I recently put the lens on a mirrorless Sony. Aside from the lack
| of auto-focus/aperture it's a still solid.
| punnerud wrote:
| Archived version, if the page is slow:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210301130639/https://kosmofoto...
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| My wife had a Zenit 12 (one of the UK market's stripped down &
| recalibrated models) back in the late 80s - which was a great
| camera, but unfortunately mold developed inside it in an
| unreachable area (as I recall). We were living in a damp
| environment, it wasn't the camera's fault.
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| Of course, there's also the FS-12, my favorite oddball camera...
| http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Zenit_Photosniper
| Wildgoose wrote:
| I still have my Fed-4L rangefinder, (which was closely modelled
| on a Leica). It was my first proper camera as teenager in the
| late 1970s and it was just fabulous.
|
| I was never happy with switching to SLR and I now use a Fuji
| X-Pro1 which brought back the love of photography that my
| wonderful affordable Fed-4L first instilled in me.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FED_(camera)
| [deleted]
| iSnow wrote:
| I used to own the infamous Kiev 88 TTL with a range of lenses,
| and while I loved the knock-off design and heft, the build
| quality was disastrous. The film cassettes leaked light which
| ruined some films, the transport would jam, and the shutter as
| well.
|
| I've never been too fond of the softness of the 35mm's, the 120
| photos were just that much better. But then digital happened and
| both lenses and sensors outgrew anything analog.
| mitjak wrote:
| > 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.
| cesaref wrote:
| 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).
| mitjak wrote:
| 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"
| iSnow wrote:
| 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]
| cesaref wrote:
| Agreed, the Kiev 88 isn't reliable. A number of years back I
| ordered a Hartblei - they take new Kiev 88s and fix the obvious
| shortcomings, before applying any modifications you require.
|
| My Hartblei is configured for Hasselblad backs and hoods, and
| takes Pentacon six lenses.
|
| I use this with an Arsat 35mm fisheye lens as the hasselblad
| equivalent is very expensive by comparison. The result is a
| strange mixture of multiple parts, but it's kind of fun!
| ruined wrote:
| old Zenits and M42 lenses are cheap enough that i could afford to
| get into photography a few years back when i was living the punk
| life. thrifted a "Kalimar" that had the original cyrillic under
| some glued-on aluminum plates, bought a hundred feet of arista
| and some empty cassettes. dev with coffee and fix with salt.
|
| holga if i wanted to get even sloppier, lubitel for higher
| quality. you can scan 6x6 120 on a canoscan lide (or at the
| library) and get better-than-instagram resolution.
| Tade0 wrote:
| One thing to remember when buying such a camera is to avoid those
| which were built in haste so as to fulfil the production plan for
| a given period - usually a month.
|
| The serial number often indicates the date of production as well.
| moolcool wrote:
| I fell down the Soviet photography rabbit hole, and it's so much
| fun. You can just experiment with different lenses, cameras, and
| focal lengths for a fraction of the cost, and usually without
| sacrificing much quality. I picked up a Zorki 1 off Ebay for
| peanuts, and it works perfectly. It's small, has a collapsable
| lens, and just lives in my jacket pocket all the time. It's quite
| heavy, and every control has a very satisfying mechanical
| feeling. You can also pick up lens adapters (usually m39 for
| rangefinder, and m42 for SLR) to use Soviet glass on modern
| mirrorless cameras. The Helios 44-2 is a really really good lens
| for the price, and is a great companion to my Sony A6000
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