Before you buy a Soviet Camera | Hacker News Reader

Before you buy a Soviet Camera

kosmofoto.com

162 pointsbrudgers65 comments

> 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.”

> "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).

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.

> Remember how the compilation time of Nokia's Symbian OS was two weeks?

I feel there's an interesting story right here.

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.

I contracted with a big-4 consulting firm on an acquisition of a demergered business and the program had to set up a "one of everything" IT shop and demerge and migrate the data. The program had us coordinating and 4-5 other vendors delivering bits of it. I was there for a year (the program ran for another year+). At the time I left, the Jira count was over 35,000 - though that also included risks, decisions, issues and less common issue types. They probably got close to 100K by the time they were done.

I don't know if "progress" was measured by Jira tickets, but I'm sure it helped some to justify the extortionate rates we charged.

They do, it's just that many of them don't do it for long.

The bosses don't stick around long enough to learn that what they are doing doesn't work, and go try to repeat it somewhere else.

“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 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/

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

You are underestimating the Soviet engineers.

Best Soviet engineers were designing military planes, not household appliances.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

You are being downvoted and yet it's still happening today.

https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c...

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sent...

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.

If you buy a high end wood plane today, it's still recommended you disassemble the whole thing, lap the faces and then reassemble.

They do a good job, but you can achieve better tolerances using equipment that costs less than the first plane (and which you might be able to borrow)

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!

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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/

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!

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

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.

> 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"

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.

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!

The pentaprism finder, though, was an absolute bargoon, and there were probably more Kiev prisms on Hasselblads than there were on Kievs in my day. You could buy an awful lot of film with the literally hundreds of dollars you'd save over what 'Blad wanted for theirs. The only wedding photographers I knew who didn't have the Kiev finder were waist-level purists (who'd probably forgotten how to pan unflipped by that point).

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)

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

>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.

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.

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.

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.

Archived version, if the page is slow: https://web.archive.org/web/20210301130639/https://kosmofoto...

Archive.org version : https://web.archive.org/web/20210228023629/https://kosmofoto...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

M4 and M249 don't really have anything in common, and the latter is a Belgian (FN) design. On the other hand, RPK is really the same gun as AK in essence, just beefed up.

But even when comparing M4/M16 vs AK, it depends. The Stoner design is more sensitive to dirt, but it's also much better at keeping it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX73uXs3xGU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAneTFiz5WU

(Not coincidentally, the AK slit for the charging handle that opens up whenever the gun is off safe is not-so-affectionately referred to as "slit for dirt" in Russian Army speak.)

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.

I have a Fed-3 that my grandfather, a photojournalist in Soviet Estonia used for his work. After simple repairs it works great and shoots gorgeous pictures. It's a lot of fun to use as well!

https://ibb.co/HCCkNXZ

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.

Of course, there's also the FS-12, my favorite oddball camera... http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Zenit_Photosniper

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.

Love these cameras. The Agat 18k is a marvel!

no mention of the krasnogorsk k-3! one of the cheapest and most popular 16mm non sync movie cameras around...

> 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.

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?

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