USSR copies of Chinese cameras

Hope this helps!

Best regards,
Juhani

yes thank you very much Juhani, very cool of you to post this. if I can get it translated I'll post it back up here. laters

Very interesting post.

I probably will add a Shanghai 58-1 to my collection, a Leica/Zorki/Fed copy of 1958



best regards
Johan

This Shanghai is much nearer a Leica IIIb than Zorki or FED
Shanghai has slow speeds and prismatic finder (towards joining oculars
Regards
LP

I find the title of this topic quite curious. There were no USSR copies of Chinese cameras as well as there were almost NO Chinese copies of the USSR cameras.
All "Chinese copies" were really the original USSR cameras, that were produced on the factories built by USSR in China. All these cameras were made with the original soviet technical documentation from original soviet parts under the coaching of the soviet engineers.
So they were not a copy, but the original, branded for the "USSR younger brother".

What is about Chinese Lieca-copies? I think they are copies of original Leica, but not the copies of FED or Zorki (may be except of FED-2?).

Regards, Alexander

Originally it was so. But later the USSR-designs were modified to suit Chinese. Also designs like shutter and lens were adopted to many cameras, which lead to that most Chinese cameras are technically almost same. So not copies, but neither original either, except the very few earliest models. Same evolution that happened with Fed, Kiev and Zorki.

Best regards,
Juhani

quote:

---

Originally posted by AlexanderK

I find the title of this topic quite curious. There were no USSR copies of Chinese cameras as well as there were almost NO Chinese copies of the USSR cameras.
All "Chinese copies" were really the original USSR cameras, that were produced on the factories built by USSR in China. All these cameras were made with the original soviet technical documentation from original soviet parts under the coaching of the soviet engineers.
So they were not a copy, but the original, branded for the "USSR younger brother".

---

Interesting. I didn't know that FED and KMZ produced in China.
Were these cams only produced for the chinese market?
When did this USSR/China cooperation start? 1958?
They made the Fed-2. How about Zorki-2C and Zorki-5?
Zorki-2C and Zorki-5 have a big gap in the serial numbers. Zorki-2C was produced till around #5816xxxx and then started again with #589xxxxx. Zorki-5 had first a 7-digit serial number in 1958 and later in 1958 it changed to 8-digits starting with 589xxxxx also.
Could it be that all 589xxxxx Zorki-2C and Zorki-5 are chinese made?
I'm not sure about Fed-2, but there are changes in the serial-number-system also.

The Zenit copy "Zi jin shan" shown in the first photo in this thread seems to be a real chinese copy before this USSR/China cooperation.