Getting warmer ... like early spring here ... not many new listings on ebay ... time to play with cameras. Just now I have a late Zorki-1c in my hands. I got it some days ago, it's cleaned and lubed now. The coating of the opening curtain is cracked and has light leaks, but the shutter is working fine now with a lovely sound. Happy to get this Zorki, wonderful thing of technic.
If you want to take the challenge of replacing the curtains. I can post you some curtain material.
Thank you so much Milo, I don't want to change the curtains. I'm always interested to keep my Zorkis original as much as possible. If I see cameras offered with new curtains it's a reason for me not to buy it. If I really would want to shoot with it I would try a coating with Plasti Dip first. I never tried that before but I think it could work well.
This small drum for the opening curtain isn't a good construction. The closing curtain which is rolled on a much bigger drum doesn't have these problems with cracked and lost coatings. If these Zorkis are not used for a long time the opening curtains get stiff and wavy and then the coating will crack. It's good to keep Zorkis cocked for some time to prevent curtain damage.
Playing with my Smena-1. I opened the backdoor, put the shutter on "B" and watch the leafs while shooting. The leafs are opening and closing very fast. I wonder if the speed of the leafs can be adjusted like on Zorkis. I think this leaf-shutter is superior at slow speeds than the Zorki shutter. I wonder why only 1/250 was the fastest speed they could reach with it. All parts of the leaf-shutter are very small and can work only with a small lens. This is the difference to Zorkis with their M39 lens-mount.
The performance of the Triplet lens (3 elements in 3 groups) can't be as good as Industars (4 elements in 3 groups). Sad that they didn't try a Smena with an Industar even if it was more expensive.
My Smena-1 is from 1956 and the build quality is amazing after so many years. It might not be used much, there are no friction-marks on the film-pressure-plate which is also made of plastic. Wonderful camera to start photography. Sad I didn't get this chance when I started. Love my Smena, so happy to have it. Wonder if there are other cameras I could fall in love with.
Thanks Luiz, I see GOMZ tried Industars in 1967, but these cameras were mostly prototypes and I think that was 10 years too late. Industars would have been great with the strong bakelite bodies of early production.
The camera I hold in my hands just now
Posted - Mar 20 2015 : 11:43:20 AM
