"Zenit-7" pre-series in Wiki Catalog

Kind day, colleague!
In Wiki Catalog the mistake is allowed: "Zenit - 7" http://www.ussrphoto.com/Wiki/default.asp?WikiCatID=69&ParentID=1&ContentID=830&Item=Zenit+7+Preseries. It not is the pre-series camera. It is the usual serial camera, which in 1969 1027 pieces were issued. The pre-series cameras were made KMZ in 1968 (them 166 pieces were really) and look so:
http://fotoua.com/4colcam.php?seek2=426&seek1=420&usl=&usl1=&rd=&st=&collector=2
With two synchronizers and with selftimer. Can there is any explanation to this fact, what the camera of the second year of manufacture is considered pre-series?
Yours faithfully, dmzi

Maybe Bill can comment on this, there must be a reason it is called preseries...

Hi All,

Yes, probably the camera serial # 6900661 pictured in the Wiki Catalog can not be called "1st Version" or "pre-series". It looks like there may have been several versions and pre-series before the final version. But it is not what Princelle calls the "2nd Version" or production series either.

The Zenit-7 seems never to have been produced in a full way and Princelle even says "A very ambitious project for the time. But according to some KMZ engineers, studies showed that the Zenit-7 would be too expensive to produce, and the project was abandoned."

So it would seem that a complete listing of the characteristics of all Zenit-7 cameras would be a good project for someone.

In many ways, I have always thought the term "pre-series" was probably not really correct and is overused (by myself too). I wonder if the factories themselves, such as KMZ, actually called any camera a "pre-series" or if early models were just called "prototype" (the first few made just to work with, in-house) and all the rest just "the new version" or later when they had been superceded by a newer version, "an early version". I think "pre-series may be more of a collector's term.

In any case, I will go back to this Zenit-7 entry and make some changes to reflect that this camera shown was not the first version or the last. Thank you for pointing this out and hopefully the camera shown on the other site (serial # 6800449) could be entered in the Wiki by someone.

Regards, Bill

Thank for the answer, Bill!
The retail price "Zenit-7" in 1969 made 170 roubles, not so is expensive. The problem of this camera was in forced shutter and overloaded springs.
If someone had to repair this camera, he with me will agree.
But in the catalogue nevertheless there should be an accuracy to not enter into error of the colleagues.
Yours faithfully, dmzi

By the way Alex Komarov (alex-photo) - www.fotoua.com - and I had exchanged the rights to re-post each other's images about a week ago or so, on each others site with proper credit to site and collector. So anyone is free to create any entries here from his site here but please do credit it properly.

Thanks!
Vlad.