ZORKI 5

Can I get anyone's opinions on this camera? Also how thick in approximation is the width of the body?

Nice, if you can live without slow speeds (nothing between 1/30 and B).

Lever advance and wide rangefinder base make it better than earlier Zorkis, if only they had added the blasted low speeds!

Usual Soviet camera caveats apply.

I no longer have one, but if IIRC, it was the same base size as other Zorkis. My Zorki 3 measures 141x32 mm at the base.

I had, in fact still have, a Zorki 6 which is very similar but loads from the back. I thought the world of it when I was a teenager in the '60's, and imagined I was using a Leica (I had a vivid imagination then). But being realistic, the lack of low speeds is a major hindrance. Mine also had a strange habit of ripping the film sprockets up, the tension in the drive must have been out of kilter. Also the viewfinder leaves a lot to be desired, and the Industar 50 is only marginally better than the lens in a Diana.

My Zorki-6 is 32 mm thick at the base, the -5 should be the same. I like this camera a lot. As for the lenses,

the Industar 50 is only marginally better than the lens in a Diana

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Well, maybe YMMV. I've never shot with a Diana, but my collapsible I-50 is a pretty good lens - sharp and contrasty.

julio1fer said:

I've never shot with a Diana, but my collapsible I-50 is a pretty good lens - sharp and contrasty.

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I've got a couple of non-collapsible I-50s on Zenit M39 SLRs, and they're OK. Here's the result of some informal lens tests I performed some time ago. Based on that, the I-50 isn't as good as more modern 50mm lenses from Pentax, Chinon, or KMZ (the Zenit maker), but it's a bit sharper and/or higher in contrast than a Tamron 28-70mm zoom. I've got a cropped 11x14 print of a photo I took with an I-50 lens on Kodachrome 64 hung on my wall. (I didn't happen to have a long enough lens for the subject when I took the photo, and I wanted to change from horizontal to vertical framing, so I cropped appropriately.) IMHO, it holds up surprisingly well to the extreme enlargement.

Both my Zorki Vs lenses are comparable with contemporary elmars? but they do need the elmar hood or (Fison) clone.
The lever wind (on both) is like turret of T-34 tank - budget for service.
Noel