So the final part of this choosing my 1st SLR, Zenit EM.
As you may already have understood, it was mostly my wallet that made the decision for me. And compared to the (only real alternative) Praktica I preferred the EM's finder & lens. Lens being faster and with closer focus, and a good focus ring which could be grabbed with gloves when it gets to minus degrees Celsius. Some may say that the finder is not so bright, but it has a good matt screen, so depth of field can be seen well. And that has always been important to me. Fast use and fast 1/1000 speed has never been that important, I am not into fast moving objects. And speeds under 1/30 need tripod, which I hated to carry around.
The price was 495 FIM back then, and difference to E was 200, so there I didn't think for long. I have never been a fan with preset aperture, especially with an uncoupled meter. And most lenses were auto, so a preset camera would have meant playing with the A/M-switch on lens.
IIRC the camera came in a cardboard box made of that terrible SU material which breaks into dust from a light touch. Instructions booklet was in Finnish, made most likely here. And naturally the case, which had to be put outdoors for a week to get the smell of leather boots milder. But as a protective case a great one.
http://www.ussrphoto.com/UserContent/2022015_ZenitEM.JPGThe original one was not Olympic as it was bought before that
Lenses: I have always wondered why the lenses were not offered here in reality. Yes, they had prices, and good ones, but no availability. Maybe it was thought, that a normal camera user doesn't buy extra lenses, especially to a cheap camera? Or export lenses were small in quantity? I do remember, that even in London with the great T.O.E. being importer, cameras were common but lenses rare.
In my local shop sometimes I saw a 135mm tele, rarely 20mm wide angle, but never the 37mm lens. MTO also, but they were expensive special lenses. Even Fotosniper was sold here, but not in quantities. So I went for Tamron, and later to cheap Japanese M42-lenses like Sun, Soligor and Vivitar.
I used my EM for a couple of years, and after I got longer and better priced summer jobs, I changed through Fujica to Nikon. Also the camera development was fast in that time. All-manual cameras, uncoupled meters, stopdown-metering, M42: all of those became obsolete very fast, and then came even mode futuristic things like Auto-Focus. So an EM was ancient history compared to an F3-Nikon, which in my opinion is an ultimate film camera.
Then came a period when I sold all my cameras away, but in early 90ies I started photography again. From my past history it was easy to go for a 122 Zenit, as it didn't cost much. Finnish tourists had imported them from Leningrad: in that time busloads traveled to and from there. Cameras were a good currency instead of rubles, usually gotten in trade for nylon stockings, jeans, bubble gum, and everything western. Also used M42-lenses were crazy cheap, as nobody wanted that ancient technology and nostalgia was not yet born. The 122 felt very familiar in my hands as being a CdS-metered EM, although the plastic body looked a bit more modern. In that time not that bad at all!
And after that things slowly began to go totally wrong, ending up with this collecting :)
Some day I will write what other SU cameras were on sale here in Finland...
