Fed 5 cable release

[indridi]

My "new" Fed 5, bought on ebay, just arrived this week (shipping + customs took over 3 weeks!), and I've been playing around with it, testshots coming soon.

I went to a local camera store and bought, amongst other, a cable release, hoping to try some night shooting, but the standard conical threaded cable releases don't fit. The sales clerk at the store said he had never seen this before (and they sell all sorts of used old cameras). Does anyone here know if this is some special russian cable-release-thread, and where one might get a cable-release to fit it. Or might this just be caused by the lack of good nights sleep of some ukrainian worker 😉 ?

Indriði

 

[Jocko]

might this just be caused by the lack of good nights sleep of some ukrainian worker 😉 ?

Indriði

I'm inclined to think the latter, indridi, although don't give up: there may just be a "knack" to getting it screwed in.

I've had FEDs where the cable screws in but the shutter wont't fire and others where it just screws in and fires perfectly. All part of the joy of the FSU camera 🙂

All the best, Ian

 

[indridi]

It definitely won't fit. I tried a lot, and then brought the camera to the store where I bought the cable release, and the clerks (backed up by a huge stack of leicas and other old cameras...) couldn't get it to fit either.
Thing is that the thread in the release button is simply too narrow to fit even the tip of the cable release. It should be possible to widen the thread with a tiny screw tap of the right size, though. Should I really (really really) want to take some night shots, I might give it a try.

Indriði

 

[John Robertson]

I have had this with a Fed3L and a Fed5, the shutter button had a conical hole in the top, but no thread had been cut in it, they had nicely chromed it though!!
When I worked in a camera shop we had one or two Zenith E's with the same problem. Just the usual FSU quality control problem!!!