Aaaah, Halloween is here again! Candy, costumes, trick-or-treaters, and for the third year in a row, another “Cameras of the Dead” post! This being my 5th Cameras of the Dead article, you probably already know what to expect. Three cameras from my “camera graveyard of death” (aka my basement) that…
This is a Zenit-E 35mm SLR camera, made by Krasnogorski Mekhanicheskii Zavod (KMZ) in the former Soviet Union between the years of 1965 and 1986. The entire Zenit (Зенит) line was extremely successful and not only sold very well, but it has become an iconic camera of the Soviet Union. Millions…
This is a Smena (Смена) 4, a 35mm compact camera made by GOMZ in Leningrad, Russia and was produced between 1958 and 1960. It was the 4th in the Smena family of cameras, and the last to be produced with this body style, made entirely of Bakelite. The camera was…
This is a Kiev-19, a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera made by the Arsenal Factory in Kiev, Ukraine between the years 1985 to 1994. It was a replacement to the earlier Kiev-17 which was the first Soviet camera to use Nikon’s F bayonet mount. Most Nikon F-mount lenses will work…
This is a Zorki 5 rangefinder camera made by Krasnogorskiy Mechanicheskiy Zavod (KMZ) in Krasnogorsk during the years of 1958 – 1959. This particular camera is an early and much less common variant with a red Zorki-5 logo engraved into the body, and a square rangefinder window. Later Zorki 5s had a…
This is a Leningrad 35mm rangefinder camera made by Gosularstvennyi Optiko-Mekhanicheskii Zavod (GOMZ for short) between the years of 1956 and 1968. Although using the same M39 screw mount as many other Soviet rangefinders, the Leningrad is not based off any existing German design like the Zenit or FED rangefinders that…
This is an Ikko Sha Start 35 K-II 35mm camera made by Ikko Sha Co. Ltd. of Japan starting in 1958. It was the second to last model in Ikko Sha’s lineup of inexpensive Bakelite bodied 35mm cameras which started with the original Start from 1950. Although using 35mm film and…
This is a Zeh Goldi, made by Paul Zeh Kamerawerk in Dresden, Germany starting in 1932. The Goldi was a compact folding camera that made 3cm x 4cm images on 127 roll film. Zeh produced the Goldi for other companies and it was sold under a variety of “white label” and…
This is an ANSCO Automatic Reflex 3.5 twin lens reflex camera, made by ANSCO of Binghamton, NY starting in 1947. It shot 6cm x 6cm images on 120 format roll film and had a feature set that compared favorably to top tier TLRs from Germany. The ANSCO Reflex was an…
This is a Signet 40 rangefinder camera made by the Eastman Kodak Company between the years 1956 and 1959. It was the successor to the earlier Signet 35 retaining it’s excellent triangular coincident image rangefinder, and improving upon it with a redesigned Bakelite and stamped metal body, a more flexible…
This is a Kodak Bantam Special, made by the Eastman Kodak Corporation in Rochester, NY between the years 1936 and 1948. The camera was the top of the line in Kodak’s Bantam series which used 828 roll film and made 28mm x 40mm exposures which were 30% larger than standard…
This is a Robot Junior (sometimes incorrectly called the Star Junior or Junior Star) made by the Robot Berning Company in Düsseldorf, Germany starting in 1954. The Junior was an economy version of the Robot Star released two years earlier which lacked a 90 degree right angle viewfinder, and rewind mechanism,…
