Another is my Zenit-E 35mm camera. Pumped out of a former Soviet Union factory to the tune of some 12 million units, these 1 kilo bricks were the workhorse of photography in many an overseas country. I had wanted so bad to have a proper 35mm single lens reflex camera when I was young. People would take such great pictures with them. Load them up with professional looking small canisters of film and display lengthy exotic 35mm negative strips.
My camera at the time was a Kodak X15 Instamatic that accepted (rather expensive) Magicube flash blubs. They were bigger than standard bulbs, never required batteries, and triggered from a small metal spring that ignited a lightly explosive powder and caused the bulb to essentially 'blow up' inside. Don't ever drop these suckers, as they would become quickly useless if you did.
K-Mart had in it's display case in it's camera department a nifty looking black and silver slender SLR camera, marked as a Zenit-E. It was made from a single cast aluminum housing, with a long rectangular window in the front (which turned out to be the light meter) and the usual array of buttons and dials that marked a handheld 35mm SLR camera. True TTL viewing and return action mirror. However, this unit had a flaw. The stock Helios 44-2 lens had small but obvious bubbles in the main lens element. A customer who was checking it out just before me and my mom got there had noticed it. The sales guy was going to pack it up and return it to the distributer, but we talked him into cutting a few dollars off the price and I got my camera. In retrospect, the lens was half the camera's value so it wasn't a great deal.
As the Zenit was equipped with M42/1 thread mount, lenses were readily available, and rather cheaply as bayonet mounts were far more popular than the screw mount of the Zenit. I picked up a pair of prime lenses at a photo shop for 50 bucks, a very fast Pentax 55/1.8 and a 135/2.8 Haminex. The Pentax lens is excellent in quality, the Haminex also pretty good, and at 135mm makes a great portrait lens.
Zenit-E outfitted with Hanimex 135mm/f2.8 lens
The Zenit carried me until 1985, when I could afford an update and purchased a Minolta X-700, which was Minolta's top offering on an SLR. Fully automatic, the Minolta was an excellent camera although prone to problems in the mechanisms. It's been repaired once and, if I really felt the need to reload a film camera, it would need a second repair to correct the lens speed sensor. The Zenit was in the shop once to fix a faulty shutter blind that blocked out the far right portion of each frame. This was quite long ago and it's worked flawlessly since. I take it out from time to time and run the mechanisms to keep them from ceasing up.
I'm thinking of dropping by Henry's and pick up a roll of film just for the hell of it. I'm sure the film and processing will cost more than the Zenit is actually worth (as it often goes on Ebay for about 10 bucks), but it would be worth it to see what comes out of it. If not at least to see what anyone might think seeing me using it.
