Zenit swimming wid da fishes?

foc said:

I even had the Zenit enlarger that folded into a suitcase.

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that may have been one of the most imaginative products of the entire Soviet Photo industry. I belive that the Chinese also made a simaalr model.

I vaguely recall something about the enlarger using a 6 Volt Automobile bulb as the light source.

Yeah there are some great lenses. My favorite was the Orion 15 28mm f6

I’ve had quite a number of FSU cinema lenses. For the most part they are excellent, well regarded optics. The rub was the mechanical quality was poor. Paul Duclos worked on some of mine and then gave me the boot! He said it just wasn’t worth his time trying to sort them out. So I stated using Stuart at Focus Optics. He would look at them, sigh, and then sort them out in a few weeks or months until the next problem arose.

I've never owned a Zenit but several acquaintances did, and were happy with the purchase from a value for money point of view.

I've got a Quarz 8mm cine camera inherited from my grandfather which was made at the KMZ factory, I believe the same one where Zenit cameras originated from. It's a bit agricultural, and probably was 10 years out of date in the West when it was launched....but it still works nearly 60 years later, still functions exactly as it did when my grandad bought it second hand in 1966.

If you got a decent example, those Russian cameras represented great value. However, as people say, fresh out of the factory not every example was well made.

Their social media site receives periodic updates, and a number of lenses appear to be available for purchase. But some product photos appear to be renderings, while others depict lenses bearing serial numbers which suggest 2017-19 production. Overall, the official message is "We are doing great!"