FSU "truthing" - Leica really FED clone ???

[john_van_v]

I found this article very convincing, even if the dates seem a little rounded off.

[FONT=Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif]"The Fed 1 camera may not have been a Leica copy at all but a Soviet home grown design" ... The "Oskar Barnack Leica may have been a product of industrial espionage" ... "[/FONT][FONT=Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif] it all begins to make sense, the early Leica I, II are in fact just clones of Soviet produced cameras."

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[xayraa33]

those brainy slavic people invented everything.🙂

 

[nzeeman]

at first i thought that it is just a junk article - but when i read it carefully - it could be some truth in it... for example "Against this sort of confusing industrial history and if you throw in the fact that Fed 2 with its improved shutter and ergonomic layout appeared in prototype form in 1939 long before Leica came up with anything similar. " This is very true soviets had very interesting inventions in that time but lacked money for mass production. alsoif they copied leica - why did they put zeiss lens copy on camera. wasnt it easier to copy leica lens too?

 

[john_van_v]

Many say the Zork 3m is the nearly-perfect camera, and the 4k is an impressively industrialized version of it. What are the dates on the 4s? This would make the Zork the proto-Leica, rather than the FED.

My problem with the FED theory is that the FED factory was run by the Soviet version of the CIA, enough said? The CIA pretty much allowed 9/11 to happen.

 

[xayraa33]

Nikola Tesla gave the drawings of a Leica like camera to a russian friend on his trip to Moscow in 1908.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Nikola Tesla gave the drawings of a Leica like camera to a russian friend on his trip to Moscow in 1908.

Ah, good ole Tesla. He was the Cray to Edison's Microsoft and Westinghouse's IBM.

 

[john_van_v]

good friend of the cosina-guy too !!

 

[Spider67]

Could be a well made mockumentary!
fact is that the Germans copied the concept of paratroopers from the Soviets (and were inspired in their ideas of divebombing by the Americans)
but a Leica as an areial recon camera? Cameras used for that were buly, witha good reason.
...On the other hand who knows if some useful features (not the whole design!) of the Zorki did not make their way back to Leitz. Anyway even Russina writers who describe Warphotographers in their accounts (Simonov) provide them with Leicas.
To me the fact that the lenses were not Leitz designs but Sonnars gives more proof to the idea of the soviets copying the Germans: Thake the best from every side just like the designers of the Nikon RF did.

 

[john_van_v]

Whew!! more "evidence" from Matt's photo site

I handed my 2C to an old Russian man who rides my bus, and his eyes lit up as he told me how it was a 'historical camera' and mentioned the former KGB, and how the FED factory was populated with criminals. 'Dis kammera, et vwas dessined and bilt by krriminals, you know?' So maybe the orphanage thing was only part of the story.

I find it ironic that the quintesential rangefinder design was stolen from criminals -- true poetic justice

a Russian woman's strong opinion (whispered to me with a certain secretive confidence) was that "FEDs are good cameras! Those Zorkis and Kievs, they are garbage."

And so are those copy-cat Leicas!!

 

[Sonnar Brian]

The Leica IV of 1934~1935 had a long-base, combined VF/RF. It probably infringed on the Contax patents then in effect. The Fed-2 looks very similar to this improved camera, and I suspect the Russians did not care about the Contax patents.

 

[rolleistef]

it's indeed curious how close to the Leica IV the Fed II is. I'm sure Leica copied it to make to make the M, don't you think? Only the interchangeable finder that was designed for the IV isn't there.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

The Leica IV superficially looks like the M3, but the latter's finder is much more complex with the projected framelines. And of course, the Shutter was much different. Non-rotating!

The Leica IV more looks like it was designed to compete with the Contax II, but production was held up by patents. I think the Fed engineers didn't care what the German Lawyers had to say in 1939...

 

[dee]

And I wonder why Leica did not copy the Zenit 1 for it's first SLR !

[ but they did a clever bit of redesign to create the 1st truly compsct SLR - i love mine ! Now did Leica help them with it ... !?]

I thouhght that I was the crazeee one !

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Looks like the Fed came about in 1934, the Leica D in 1932.

http://fedka.com/Frames/Main_Frame.htm

This is "Star Trek"- no, more like the "Time Tunnel".

 

[john_van_v]

This is great, it just goes to show how fascinating the Russian/Soviet story is, where the German pre-war connection is just a single event.

I started to buy into his ideas until he mentioned FED, and as I wrote above, there is no way I can believe that "intelligence" types could ever do anything intelligent. All they good at is hurting people, and as such lack the collaborative social mental facilities that are necessary for excellent engineering: the camera world. (In that sense, engineering is an art.)

I took a look at the author's entire web site, and he has taken some excellent portraits of (I assume) his wife and son with a Helios lenses. I would provide links, but they are in this Jalbum javascript setup.

He is also fascinated by antique transportation, such as trolleys and steam tractors.

We should get him over here.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

This is "Star Trek"- no, more like the "Time Tunnel".

I never got "into" that show.

Anyway, details details.

The greeks must've stolen that Demo-something idea from the Soviets too 😀