I had read (somewhere that I can't find) that the shutters on the Moskva were designed by the engineers along with other "improvements". These shutters have been described as bullet proof, and looking at how strong the spring is on my Moment 24, I can understand where that idea came from. The spring tension on 1/250th is worthy of a rat trap.
But, I don't know if you could swap optics around....
In Serrano's page on the Iskra (very informative) there are some details on the shutters used in the Moskva models:
So, within a short time, the USSR could make the Moskva-1 6x9(1946-1949)(with parts from the Ikonta 6x9, Zeiss tooling, folding Newton viewfinder and original German Compur shutter at the beginning and a very good Russian copy afterwards) and the Moskva-2(1947-1956) equipped with a coupled rangefinder(featured with a folding Newton viewfinder, parts of the Super-Ikonta 6x9, Zeiss tooling and Compur shutter and much more frequently Moment-1). That´s why the Iskra FXCh-18 shutter, silent as few and born in 1960, was a great achievement and the digest of nearly two decades of endeavours and own designs, evoultioned from top-notch original German concepts, both mechanical and optical, with which before the appearance of the "Iskra", the Russians had already a reputable prestige in the making of superb shutters for medium format cameras(together with the previously cited, we should add the Moment-5D shutter of the Moskva-3(1950-1951), the Moment-23S of the Moskva-4(1956-1958), the 24S of the Moskva-5 1956-1960, the ZT 13 central shutter of the Estafeta-Gomz(1957-1958), the ZT 14 of the Vympel "Ensign"(1958-59), the ZT-5 of the Lubitels 1 and 2, the ZT-11 of the Neva(1956-58), and so forth.
Furthermore, it must be underlined that the FXCh shutter can practically compete on a par with both the Compur Rapid and Synchro Compur featured by the prestigious uncoupled rangefinder folding medium format cameras Agfas Isolettes III(getting ahead of them in terms of shutter triggering smoothness and super low noise on shooting) and it´s far superior in quality and reliability to the Prontor-SVS worn by many celebrated rangefinder folding cameras.
End of quote.
In that article some Soviet photographers are mentioned that used the Iskra. I would like to know what photographs they made but couldn't find anything on the web about them. Is there more knowledge around here ?
Galièna Loukianova, specialist on Russian rural nostalgia and R.Ostrovskaïa
Ernst Dinkla