This camera introduction was written at a time when the war in Ukraine was raging, and it made me feel that peace is really precious.
Looking at the old Soviet camera in his hand, there were many ideas to say. Let's talk about my fate with him, this is a camera bought from the second-hand market, he is much older than me, I can't be his first owner. According to the previous owner, this was bought on a trip to Russia at the flea market, because it would not be sold to me with all the dozens of dollars of free shipping, and it was a small leak with an Eagle Eye of Industa, but I had not used it for a long time, as if it was quickly forgotten like the great Soviet Union that produced it.
Past Ukraine and Russia
There was no possibility of war under the management of the Socialist Patriarch, the Soviet Union, when there were many optical factories in the Soviet Union, even if different factories could be labeled in different regions, this camera should have been produced in 1979, which happened to be the day of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the source should be a factory 50 miles away from Minsk (Minsk is now the capital of Belarus, not far from Ukraine). In the same year, Sino-US relations warmed up and fought against Vietnam in self-defense, so at this time, Soviet goods probably rarely came to China.
The Zenit factory has been alive until now, and there are product launches, and the Kiev factory in Ukraine, which started better, has disappeared in the long river of history even if it has all the belongings of the Kangtai era, not to mention the more sophisticated industrial products, which seems to reflect the development of the two countries.
The Zenit e camera in hand belongs to the middle and late products, has selenium metering, the use of m42 screw, full mechanical design, the failure rate is not as high as imagined, maintenance is relatively easy, but it is difficult to get rid of the silly big black thick image, but the material is still solid, the Soviet camera in the market is far less hot than their lens, but also because the giant collapsed, these industrial products are not as good as rations.
I don't recommend buying a Soviet camera if you really want to use it, but you're also interested in history or have an old Soviet camera and give him a roll of Czech Fuma (the Czech Republic used to be a socialist country). Let's feel the romance of socialism together!