Jocko
Off With The Pixies
Keith - What fools the paper were to crop your great picture!
They were certainly supposed to! Actually things varied from factory to factory and at different periods. For example, earlier Kievs are famously well built, whilst the final versions, produced in the 80s, were generally made to a far lower standard. There's a story that c.1980 a team of inspectors arrived from Moscow and threw out weeks of camera production as literally nothing worked. The tale at least shows that there were quality standards. Even today the Arsenal works supposedly has no meaningful quality control, hence camera "reprocessors" like Arax.
Oleg confirmed to me that KMZ cameras - Zenits, Zorkis, Mirs etc - were normally produced to higher tolerances than those from other concerns. I suspect this is because the factory made high-precision gear for the military and related aerospace projects. It was normal Soviet industrial practice to produce military and civilian goods on the same production lines - the famous tanks/tractors principle. In such circumstances manufacturing equipment, worker training, craftsmanship and quality control would have - at least by Soviet standards - to be fairly good.
There's a parallel with Soviet cars. GAZ, a factory which churned out army trucks and jeeps, also made (and make) the Volga; a better-built vehicle than most Russian models.
keithslater said:
They were certainly supposed to! Actually things varied from factory to factory and at different periods. For example, earlier Kievs are famously well built, whilst the final versions, produced in the 80s, were generally made to a far lower standard. There's a story that c.1980 a team of inspectors arrived from Moscow and threw out weeks of camera production as literally nothing worked. The tale at least shows that there were quality standards. Even today the Arsenal works supposedly has no meaningful quality control, hence camera "reprocessors" like Arax.
Oleg confirmed to me that KMZ cameras - Zenits, Zorkis, Mirs etc - were normally produced to higher tolerances than those from other concerns. I suspect this is because the factory made high-precision gear for the military and related aerospace projects. It was normal Soviet industrial practice to produce military and civilian goods on the same production lines - the famous tanks/tractors principle. In such circumstances manufacturing equipment, worker training, craftsmanship and quality control would have - at least by Soviet standards - to be fairly good.
There's a parallel with Soviet cars. GAZ, a factory which churned out army trucks and jeeps, also made (and make) the Volga; a better-built vehicle than most Russian models.
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reagan
hey, they're only Zorkis
Interesting stuff Jocko. Thanx :{
And good "right place/right time" shots Keith. Best of all, it sounds like you're really enjoying the Mir.
And good "right place/right time" shots Keith. Best of all, it sounds like you're really enjoying the Mir.
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lubitel
Well-known
wyk_penguin said:
You think 3 shots of vodka is going to lessen quality control in Russia?
Not having those shots is what going to really mess up the quality!!!
rbiemer
Unabashed Amateur
Like the photos, Keith. Beautiful kid!
Suddenly there is(sort of) a route 81 RFF thing going on. I'm in Cortland, you're a bit south and we have an RFF member in Oswego. The (very slight) down side is that I'm no longer the only person in six counties around using FSU cameras.
Maybe you, me and Bob ought to figure out a meet up of our own? What do ya think?
Rob
Suddenly there is(sort of) a route 81 RFF thing going on. I'm in Cortland, you're a bit south and we have an RFF member in Oswego. The (very slight) down side is that I'm no longer the only person in six counties around using FSU cameras.
Maybe you, me and Bob ought to figure out a meet up of our own? What do ya think?
Rob
matti
Established
Jocko said:
I agree that the picture was better before the croping. But as a former night editor of a daily newspaper I have to defend them a bit. The readers need to see that a car ran up a porch, without making the picture too big. This picture would need to be four columns wide in the original cropping. And paper is expensive...
/matti
Jocko
Off With The Pixies
matti said:
Matti, I hadn't thought of that - your analysis is obviously right. I also think that journalistic practice varies from country to country, and that in the UK there tends to be more emphasis on photographs. Yet for all that, by focusing so narrowly on one area of detail, much of the context of the story is lost. As a non-American its those "peripheral", local aspects of the photograph which strike me most powerfully.
Obviously it's a matter of news priorities, but its often difficult for contemporaries to recognise the real story in a given photograph. Keith's picture reminds me of a similar image taken in March, the town where I live, in 1900. Some piece of nonsense is happening in the foreground, but the really fascinating thing is going on unnoticed to the rear - the first telephone line is being installed. It's a picture of the exact moment of the end of the Victorian world and the beginning of the modern age. I'm glad no one cropped that image.
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matti
Established
Yes, when I worked with choosing pictures I allways tried to use just one for each page (broadsheet that was) and maybe some half column narrow portraits. Just to give that large picture space. I really love pictures where something else is happening. Maybe a small fox is looking straight into the camera in the lower left corner or someting
/matti
/matti
Jocko said:
Jocko
Off With The Pixies
matti said:I really love pictures where something else is happening. Maybe a small fox is looking straight into the camera in the lower left corner or someting
/matti
I can't stop smiling at the thought!
Kim Coxon
Moderator
I used to regularly sell air to air photos to some of the magazines in the UK. I went down to London to meet one of the editors. All the shots he liked were the 3/4 views and the ones with good backgrounds. The ones he bought were the boring side on with sky as a background. The reason was that most of the readers wanted the mag for the photos so they could model the planes and they could scale these.
More on topic, my Mir is my favourite of the FSU cameras. I don't need the slow shutter speeds and the simpler Mir seems to be much mor reliable and rugged.
Kim
More on topic, my Mir is my favourite of the FSU cameras. I don't need the slow shutter speeds and the simpler Mir seems to be much mor reliable and rugged.
Kim
keithslater
Established
Rob,
That sound like fun. Maybe meet in Ithaca some time.
That sound like fun. Maybe meet in Ithaca some time.