Blog archives

Monday, October 19, 2009

Copiers!

Many Soviet machines are presented as copies of Western bloc ones. This thanks to the "Iron Curtain" and the obligation imposed by Stalin not to import from the West and thus manufacture everything needed. I already told you that most of what we know about the production of cameras, the Zenit, was the direct descendant of the first serial produced Leica copy, the Fed. The copy champion manufacturing unit seems to be Arsenal in Kiev. There are of course the Contax renamed Kiev, not quite copies, since the full Zeiss factory was dismantled and moved to the East (including staff, is told...). The other "copy" is the Salyut (then Kiev 80, Kiev 88), identical copy of the Hasselblad 1000, the legend tells that the dimensions were taken on a very tired body, producing brand new cameras on which failure occurred due to wear!
You perhaps also know the Kiev 35A, identical copy of Minox 35, which also often does not work...
I recently discovered another surprizing copy, the Vega, copy of the Minolta 16 (the spy camera of TV series of the 60s), it is told that you can take parts from one to fix the other...
But the Arsenal Ukrainians are not simple copiers, they developed their copies differently from the evolution of originals, the models that have succeeded to the Vega, compared to models that have succeeded to Minolta 16, are a good example of that. They also created a range of 135 reflex cameras providing original solutions (Kiev 10, 11, 15 with original bayonet and first focal plane metal curtain shutter, Kiev 17, 18, 19, 20 using Nikon bayonet).
See:
-My collection of 16mm cameras
-The Minolta 16 range on subclub.org.