Tag: zenitology

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E is not for Excellent

A nice all black export version
A nice all black export version

Back to Zenits it is, then. Now, what’s after Zenit 6? Zenit 7? After the 6, them guys at KMZ decided that they were done with numbers and that they would start using letters. ‘E’ was as good as any other, I guess. Numbers weren’t the only thing over, as you can see: the external design departs fully from the Leica-ish rounded corners body and becomes more Contax-ish: an irregular octagon. It’s arguably a more comfortable design. Maybe. No, I’m not going to admit that the Contax handled better than the Leica.

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Central shutter X-travaganza: Zenit fourfivesix

Yes, the filter thread is bent. Geez, will you always see only the bad side of everything?
Yes, the filter thread is bent. Geez, will you always see only the bad side of everything?

You know, in the 1960’s central shutter 35mm SLRs were the rage. Big camera makers, specially German but also Japanese, incorporated them into their offer as a cheaper option for those who wanted to see what they were shooting through a lens. This means they aimed them at amateurs, universally. Those camera systems were pretty limited if compared to the pro focal-plane shutter systems: most models were fixed lens cameras, specially the Japanese, so if you wanted to shoot a different focal length than that of the native lens you had to use an optical adapter, similar to that crap used in the cell phones nowadays when them hipsters want to shoot ‘fisheye’ or ‘tele lens’. The adapters did the job, but optical quality was quite meh. Kodak’s approach to this tech was a system with three optical elements built in camera with a bayonet for objectives that could contain one or more elements for different focal lenses. Anyway, the range of focal lengths was quite poor.

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Zenitology: lost chapters

Yes, you're cute
Yes, you’re cute

It looks like Baron I, as enthusiastic as he was about telling you everything about the Zenit 3M, missed one key link in the Zenit ¿evolutionary? line.

For, behold, here’s the Zenit 3, without an M, only 3. I simply assume that the Zenit C, being nothing else than the original Zenit with a flash synch socket (hence the C, which is cyryllic for ‘s’, which in turn stands for synchronised), is the Zenit mark 2, since, AFAIK, there is, officially, no Zenit 2, not even at blueprint stage.  

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3M, the ¿evolution? of the Zenit line

Yes, back to Zenitology it is. I’ve been doing some assignments with my alloy digital camera in the last weeks so I haven’t had much time to shoot something classic and classy like this Zenit 3M. I didn’t plan on doing Zenitology today but when I went to my studio and almost casually picked this Zenit 3M its sensuality numbed my reasoning. As if I ever had much of it.

While I was touching it, caressing it, feeling it against my face… yes, we left-eyed folks are just so lucky that we must push the camera with our whole face in order to get our good eye actually see something through the viewfinder. I mean, while I was doing all this, the urge to shoot something analog and chrome and SLR came to me. Hi, my name is Baron I, and I am a cameraholic.

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