Leningrad anyone have one?

[ray*j*gun]

Does anyone have experience with Leningrads? I have seen a few that look really nice but I don't know anything about them. Any insight would be very helpful.

Thanks

Ray

 

[Roger Hicks]

Quite fun, good multi-frame finder, noisy, rough, film spacing wildly uneven (as far as I recall there's no spacing by sprocket-counting), reputedly (no personal experience of this) fragile zinc alloy chassis that crystallizes and cracks.

For a party-piece I used to put mine on a table top; set the self timer; then watch people jump when it did.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Tair-11A]

It's fragile camera

 

[dazedgonebye]

Looks to be just the kind of off beat and cool camera that I spend money on and am never quite able to make work properly.

I've resisted the temptation to date.

 

[ray*j*gun]

Thanks!!!! Lots to learn in this area....I have never owned an FSU camera but I want one to shoot with that is reliable and pretty.

I'll keep looking and thanks again!!

Ray

 

[gb hill]

Buy a Fed or a Zorki. Fed 2's are alot of first timer fsu favorites. I like my Zorki 2c better than the Fed 2. It's a bottom loader while the fed is not. You being a Leica lllc owner should be quite use to that.

 

[robbo]

I owned and used a Leningrad all the way through university, so quite a while ago! In fact I think I bought it new. The 'clockwork' film advance was, at the time quite cool, I thought, and came in handy when I was taking photos of a friend demonstrating tennis strokes for a paper he was writing. I found it rugged, reliable and capable of some nice images - portraits came out well. I think it had a Jupiter lens, but I may be wrong about that. The negs come out with increasingly wide gaps between them because the roller gets wider as the film collects on it. I suppose you could call it quaint. Unfortunately I sold it at the end of university to get a Practica slr and now I'm serching for another to replace it. Prices seem quite high when you can find one.

 

[QUAsit]

(thoughtful) Discuss Leningrad camera on the 18th January? ) Quite symbolical....

Well anyway, Leningrad is not for first timers in FSU gear use. And not for second timers... and even not for one hundred timers. Very unreliable, though beautiful thing.

 

[Roger Hicks]

I owned and used a Leningrad all the way through university, so quite a while ago! In fact I think I bought it new . . . I found it rugged, reliable and capable of some nice images - portraits came out well. I think it had a Jupiter lens, but I may be wrong about that.

Indeed, the reputation for reliability may simply be a function of age: I got rid of mine over 25 years ago, when they were much newer. Mine had a Jupiter, too; for those who are unfamiliar with the camera (not you, obviously), it's Leica screw mount.

Cheers,

R.

 

[giovatony]

Being that they are fewer and obviously harder to find , if I were to come across one at a reasonable price I would certainly have it serviced before using it.
There`s very little pleasure owning and or trying to use a camera that needs works . It`s all too easy to declare a camera as a piece of junk simply because it needs to be CLA`d or repaired.
John

 

[Tair-11A]

(thoughtful) Discuss Leningrad camera on the 18th January? ) Quite symbolical....

Well anyway, Leningrad is not for first timers in FSU gear use. And not for second timers... and even not for one hundred timers. Very unreliable, though beautiful thing.

Редкая красивая штукенция, буржучегу для коллекции будет если купит

 

[robbo]

This site is quite interesting: http://corsopolaris.net/leningrad/leningrad.html

 

[zorroflores]

wow!, sexy!

 

[jlw]

My Leningrads are no longer with me, but the pages I did about them still are:

Leningrad overview

Leningrad innards

 

[rxmd]

Редкая красивая штукенция, буржучегу для коллекции будет если купит

I guess for a collector it's all nice and fair, but as a user camera it is really quite capricious. That's the main reason why I never bothered to get one seriously. It's loud, heavy, rewind is slow, and if the spring mechanism breaks, you have no way of operating the camera at all.

Philipp

 

[Tair-11A]

anyway... Link if somebody need this subject: http://rafcamera.com/leningrad-russian-motorized-35mm-camera-p-472.html

 

[ray*j*gun]

Thanks all for the info.....they look like pretty cameras but not for my first time, Lol.