Fed-3 Serial Number?

Hi there. I have recently had a great Fed 3 with an Industar 61 and as always I was trying to find the camera's and lens' production date but this time faced with a problem. As you can see in the photo, camera's serial number begins with zero and it has only six digits. Can you help me? Thanks!


http://www.ussrphoto.com/UserContent2/10102021_IMG_20211010_103613.jpg




http://www.ussrphoto.com/UserContent2/10102021_IMG_20211009_224001.jpg

Hello and welcome to the forum, BluesJunior.

It's a bit of a shame that you've not had a reply from any of the members who know what they are talking about. Instead you'll have to accept this reply from me.

I've just looked at the "sovietcams.com" website, (there's a different one called sovietcameras.org, which is set out differently and has different information and from what I can see, doesn't list or show the differences between the different versions of each camera, it doesn't mention the differences between the FED 3A and the FED 3B).

Anyway, the first website doesn't mention ANY serial number on the bottom of any FED 3. It does give the earliest and latest known serial numbers for each version of each camera. It DOES say :

"PE0655. Camera identical to PE0650, but with new serial number coding system again. 6-digits serial number without date prefix already. Appr. 1 million copies released since 1968." The number on the front of this camera's lens is: 9023828. But is that the lens the camera was supplied with?

and that the previous camera (what it lists as "PE0650" was released 1967-1968).

This is what they say about the next FED 3 they list:

"PE0660. Released in 1978-1980. Less common to find "Olympic" version of Fed-3 camera. Not oherwise different from PE0655." the number on the front of THIS camera's lens is: 9193540. But is this lens the one the camera was supplied with?

So to me, it looks like your lens was supplied sometime after 1968 and sometime before 1978.

Does your camera have any number on the back of the camera?

I have just found a website that says the FED 4B (FED four B) has the serial number on the bottom, no mention of where it is on the FED 3 though.

BluesJunior, I've just been looking at some FED 3B's on "picclickuk" (It's really just ebay but with all of the search results on one page, which you scroll down) and every single FED 3B that I saw which has the serial number on the bottom, only have six digits, and they range from "002231" to "939702", so I'm not sure if that helps at all.

Thanks for info! I am still curious about the production date but at least now I think its geniune, not fake.

I've just managed to find the "wiki" page that this forum has, which lists various Soviet photo equipment. It can be found by going to the forum Home Page and looking down to find:

"wiki catalog and resources issues/questions, then

Well I was going to give a set of instructions on how to find the list with that camera in it, but I can't find the bit I clicked on to get to the list, lol. Anyway, I already had the list page open in a different tab, so I'm going to try and post a link to that page:

http://ussrphoto.com/wiki/default.asp?ParentID=1


For the listing of the FED 3L/D that they have, it doesn't have a serial number on the back either, but they don't show the underneath. I presume it does have a serial number there.

Let's hope someone who knows why there's a difference in the placing of the serial numbers on some FED 3's and why there is a difference in the length of the serial numbers on some FED3's, will answer soon.