FED and Zorki Soviet Era Rangefinders

On today's vlog episode I'm digging back into the "camera closet" by request to look at some soviet era, Russian rangefinder cameras.

If you'd like to see what images look like from these cameras, I put together a gallery of Zorki and FED images on Flickr: http://goo.gl/Mo16i

These things are fairly easy to find and not very expensive. Lots of fun to collect.

I must apologize - I'm more of a photographer than a camera buff so it is possible that I've got some information wrong about these cameras. Feel free to add corrections below in the comments. Even better - leave a video response - particularly if you have one of these cameras to show.

FEDs and Zorkis, though very similar were produced in 2 different factories. FEDs were produced between 1934 and 1990 at Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky - Zorki's between 1948 and 1978 at the Krasnogosrsk Mechanical Factory.

The cameras I've shown in this video are a FED 1, a Zorki 1, a FED 3 and a FED 5b.

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Ted Forbes
The Art of Photography
2830 S. Hulen, Studio 133
Fort Worth, TX 76109
US of A