Fun With A Russian

WTF is a Zorki?

After World War 2 the Soviets took material, tooling, dies, and in some cases entire factories and the skilled workers to run them, from occupied Germany back to the USSR as war reparations. All of Germany’s patents were also released into the public domain by the allied governments. The Soviets (and others) began manufacturing Leica and Contax clones for internal and export markets – this was also the basis of Japans post war camera industry- and so we get this Zorki 35mm Rangefinder, a Soviet derivative of the Leica 3.

This one has commemorative markings celebrating the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution so I’m assuming a manufacture date of about 1967. It’s a bit clunky, the film registration is slightly off, there’s no batteries or exposure meter, but it fits in my coat pocket and is actually a lovely small camera to carry around. Here’s a few frames from some test rolls. The color negatives were developed and scanned by a local lab, the b&w shots were hand developed and scanned at home.