Four minty Zorki 4K

zhang xk said:
I have a very rare Fed Berdsk with a 1/1000 top speed. I think the camera was made for the rare Fed B in the beginning. Body parts are with pounched holes for a slow speed mechanism, but was made do for a slow speedless Fed 1 for lacking of parts during the war. I think Leica already offered a camera with 1/1000 top speed, and the Russians were trying to catch up?

Zhang
Is the hole punched for the slow speed mechanism through the vulcanite or just the inner body shell? The only oddities (out of sequence features) on my Berdsk is a smooth release button and a small pin bottom. I guess they were truly parts cameras. Saul Kaminsky of KievUSA had two Fed-B cameras he picked up in Russia when he strated importing Soviet cameras (he also had a TSVVS), I wonder what happend to them.

Michael
 
outfitter said:
Is the hole punched for the slow speed mechanism through the vulcanite or just the inner body shell? The only oddities (out of sequence features) on my Berdsk is a smooth release button and a small pin bottom. I guess they were truly parts cameras. Saul Kaminsky of KievUSA had two Fed-B cameras he picked up in Russia when he strated importing Soviet cameras (he also had a TSVVS), I wonder what happend to them.

Michael

A hole was punched on the top plate under the cover, and I remember the inner parts are also different. But no holes were punched through the vulcanite. The release button is similar to a Fed S's. I am not sure what is a small pin bottom. The bottom on mine is similar to any pre-war Fed-1s. It came with a one botton leather case. My 1st post war Fed 1 version has a smooth release botton.

Cheers,

Zhang
 
zhang xk said:
I am not sure what is a small pin bottom. The bottom on mine is similar to any pre-war Fed-1s.

Cheers,

Zhang
On one end of the removable bottom is a locking key and on the other end is a hole for the fixing pin or stud on the body. The diameter of this pin was greatly enlarged around serial #80,xxx. My Fed-1s #65,xxx has a small pin all the others a large pin. My Berdsk at #182,xxx has a small pin indicating earlier parts were used (body shell and bottom).

Michael
 
I only now just clicked on this thread, because my 4K has caused me nothing but heartache 🙁

Brian, you need to get hold of one of those lenses! The Fed 3.5 is so great, and I was musing as to why there was never a 2.8 collapsible (does the 1-61 need to be so big?) and behold, there is actually a 2.0! A proper collimation, a trip to Arax, and I wonder what we have here?
 
outfitter said:
On one end of the removable bottom is a locking key and on the other end is a hole for the fixing pin or stud on the body. The diameter of this pin was greatly enlarged around serial #80,xxx. My Fed-1s #65,xxx has a small pin all the others a large pin. My Berdsk at #182,xxx has a small pin indicating earlier parts were used (body shell and bottom).

Michael

Thanks for the tip. This is very interesting. My 72xxx has a small pin, and 82xxx has a large pin. My Berdsk 179xxx has a large pin, and Fed-C at 141xxx also has a large pin. I have 3 small pin Fed-1s, and an I-10 lens with a number 7408 on the lens mount. Is this the lens S/N ? If so, it is a very early lens.🙂

Cheers,

Zhang
 
zhang xk said:
I have 3 small pin Fed-1s, and an I-10 lens with a number 7408 on the lens mount. Is this the lens S/N ? If so, it is a very early lens.🙂

Cheers,

Zhang
Hard to say really; study of these numbers is complicated by the fact that lenses could be switched. The lowest number lens I have is #10,xxx and that came attached to a Fed type 1b with the brass viewfinder bezels (serial #9,xxx). On the very earliest lenses (I need one) the rear plate with the distance scale had only one screw and that was fatter than on later lenses. Also the front element was more forward. Is the early lens close to this pattern or indistinguisable from the usual pre-war Fed 50 (I-10) lens?

Michael
 
outfitter said:
Hard to say really; study of these numbers is complicated by the fact that lenses could be switched. The lowest number lens I have is #10,xxx and that came attached to a Fed type 1b with the brass viewfinder bezels (serial #9,xxx). On the very earliest lenses (I need one) the rear plate with the distance scale had only one screw and that was fatter than on later lenses. Also the front element was more forward. Is the early lens close to this pattern or indistinguisable from the usual pre-war Fed 50 (I-10) lens?

Michael

Hi,

I checked all my uncoated I-10s, and there is even a I-10 with a S/N 428! It has two screws on the rare plate, but the infinate release button pin is taller, and the pressed pattern around the pin is finer. These two early I-10s look identical. I will post some images FYI.

Kind Regards

Zhang
 
zhang xk said:
Hi,

I checked all my uncoated I-10s, and there is even a I-10 with a S/N 428! It has two screws on the rare plate, but the infinate release button pin is taller, and the pressed pattern around the pin is finer. These two early I-10s look identical. I will post some images FYI.

Kind Regards

Zhang
I have never seen one but have collected a number of photos of the earliest, here are two:
 

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Zhang you have inspired me to look at all my I-10 lenses and I found some interesting things:

1) the fine pattern around release button collar is non-sequential and is mixed in with the coarse pattern among early lenses - obviously they just came out of a parts bin containing both types.
2) the earliest lenses had only one stop pin which was high; next earliest had two stop pins and both were high; the last (until the end) had two stop pins but the one that stopped the release button was low and while the pin at infinity was high.
3) uncoated lenses were sometimes put together with parts from coated lenses: I have a low number ( 4,734) uncoated lens with a low stop pin - probably a back plate from a later coated lens (the numbers appear to start all over again when they changed the f-stops and coated the lenses) as the focusing tab is at 5 o'clock when placed on an early body.

I wish more of this stuff was around to collect; eBay has dried up as a reasonable source of honest early cameras and here in the USA there are few other sources.

Regards,
Michael
Michael
 
outfitter said:
Zhang you have inspired me to look at all my I-10 lenses and I found some interesting things:

1) the fine pattern around release button collar is non-sequential and is mixed in with the coarse pattern among early lenses - obviously they just came out of a parts bin containing both types.
2) the earliest lenses had only one stop pin which was high; next earliest had two stop pins and both were high; the last (until the end) had two stop pins but the one that stopped the release button was low and while the pin at infinity was high.
3) uncoated lenses were sometimes put together with parts from coated lenses: I have a low number ( 4,734) uncoated lens with a low stop pin - probably a back plate from a later coated lens (the numbers appear to start all over again when they changed the f-stops and coated the lenses) as the focusing tab is at 5 o'clock when placed on an early body.

I wish more of this stuff was around to collect; eBay has dried up as a reasonable source of honest early cameras and here in the USA there are few other sources.

Regards,
Michael
Michael

Hi Michael,

Now I checked my coated I-10 with stop pins. There are two of them. One has a fine pattern collar around the stop pin, and two numbers, 4293 on the back of lens mount, and 085446 on the front. Another one has a coarce pattern, and only one number 5364 on the back of lens mount. It seems to me that these lenses were assembled with parts from left over parts lots.

I noted that all I-10 has a far durable chrome plating. None of mine has brassing or scracthes that are often found on I-22 or I-50. Many I-10s look very new.

So the research continues...😀

Cheers,

Zhang
 
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