Zorki C and lens serial numbers

Hello,

yesterday another Zorki C arrives here (by the way it is one with the "Festival" engraving - that was a nice surprice for me because I could not see it on the ebay pictures :-)

After checking the serial numbers I have found out an odd thing. Normally we know that the year of the lens corresponds to the year of the camera the most time.

Now I have found out that 5 Zorki C, 4 from 1957 and one from 1958, have lenses which serial numbers start with 70 or 71. The 2 with the 70 are very close together (also the serials of the camera body) and 2 of the 71 lenses are also very close together (and here also the body serials).

So I think that these lenses were the original lenses delivered with the camera at that time. But - why do they use 70 or 71 for the 2 first digits at that time? My first thougt was that this are later lenses that don't match the camera, but after having 5 ones that have serials so close togehter I think that they came out of the factory with these lenses. What is the magic of the 70 or 71? Btw. it are all Industar 22 lenses.

Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de

Even my Festival has 71-11893 lens so one more proof...

Best regards,
Juhani

Hello Juhani,

checking out my table of serial numbers I have found others... There is one Zorki 2 which has an Industar 22 lens that also begins with 70. And there are 2 Zorki C and one Zorki 1 that have lens serials that start with 60 or 61. And I think that that lenses seem to be the original ones. It's magic...

Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de

And btw. the serials are the same length as the normal serials, 7 digits. So they havn't just forget the first digit of the year while engraving :-)

Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de

Yea lens on mine start with 71 too..

Vlad.

The cross hatching on the "C" knobs changed from the diamond pattern of the 1 series to a square pattern (except for most if not all 1955 and the earliest of the 1956 bodies which had a vertical "stripe" pattern). The lenses seem to have been redesigned to match and the square pattern appears to have been reserved for the standard Industar 22s fitted to the C series and the Industar 50s fitted as options to Zorki 5s for which the 1958 serial numbers seem to be in the 80xxxxx and 81xxxxx range.

Excluding lenses from my database which don't seem to fit the "C" pattern, lenses fitted to 1956 bodies have predominantly 60 and 61 numbers with a couple of 62s and one 63. A couple of latish 1956s have 7 series numbers. Lenses fitted to 1957 bodies have 70, 71 or 72 numbers. The Festivals I have listed fit into the narrow band of 5713xxxx to 5715xxxx (please let me know of ones outside this range) and for these, the 71xxxxx lens numbers appear to be entirely consistent with perhaps the very earliest festival having a 70 prefix and very high number. My sample of 1958 bodies is small - 5 and inconclusive. One with a 70 lens number, a 71 and a 5 something and the other 2 I don't know.

If there is a pattern, then it is that the first numeral denotes the 1950's production year ie 7 would indicate 1957 and the rest of the number is consecutive in order of production or allocation. This would also fit the Zorki 5 production noted above for collapsible 50s. (In the interests of statistical validity, there are over 50 "C"s in my database.)

Of course, this might be coincidence. With the one 1c to 1d series, there might be a match between the first two numbers and the year of production (ie 5327425 might be made in 1953) but I have no 55 or 56 series lens numbers in my database so what happened to all the lenses fitted to "1e"s ? Or is that the first year that the year of production was denoted by only the first number (this would fit but 1e lenses in my database are all over the place with almost equal numbers of diamond hatched, square hatched and straight line (?) pattern lenses).
Cheers,
Paul

By the way, production beyond the 81 series collapsible Industar 50s (presumably made in 1958) seem to be limited to LZOS made 50s (all with straight milling rather than hatching). These all have 8 numerals and run pretty evenly from 57xxxxxx, to 70xxxxxx so I presume with these the first two numbers denote the year of production.
Paul

Paul,

interesting. I checked my Zorki C's and you are right, the lenses with the 70 and 71 serials have the straight milling instead of the hatched...

By the way I own 2 Festival Zorki C the serials are 5711xxxx and 5714xxxx. The lenses of both are only 432 numbers away from each.

Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de

Thanks Ulrich. I will add 5711xxxx to my database as a Festival range. So far, the range seems to run from 5711xxxx to 5715xxxx. There are also cameras in this range which are not Festivals.

By straight milling, I assume you mean the square pattern (unfortunately, I used both stripe and straight milling to mean the same thing). There are 3 main milling styles which graphically look something like this: xxxx, #### and llll. There are some KMZ Industar 22s with straight milling (llll) (mostly 60, 61 and 62 prefixes but also the odd 50) but these were probably meant for Zorki 3s and the very early Cs to match camera knobs. The others with predoninantly straight milling were the LZOS 50s.

If you did mean straight milling by my description, then my theories are blasted out of the water!
Regards,
Paul

Paul,

you are right, I mean the squared milled (###) instead of straight :-)

Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de