mich rassena
Well-known
The odd thing is that people are happy to pay a lot for a Leica and lens and get it/them repaired for hundreds but won't pay a fraction of that amount to sort out a FED, Zorki or Zenit.
I've noticed that trend as well. I suppose if you have a broken Leica fixed, then at the end of the day you have a Leica. But if you get a Zorki fixed, at the end of the day, you don't have a Leica. There's definitely the perception that FSU cameras are cheap and plentiful. I've fooled around trying to fix a Kiev whose rangefinder wasn't quite right, when the job was better left to someone who knows what they're doing. I was only emboldened to try it because it was cheap to begin with and I wasn't willing to spend any more money on it.
So, with FSU cameras, there's sort of a self-fulfilling view of the cameras as junk. I paid junk store prices for most of my FSU stuff. I recently paid $10 for a FED 5B that's missing stuff and only some shutter speeds work. I thought it looked cool, and as someone who grew up during the Cold War, the novelty of former Soviet stuff arriving at my mailbox just hasn't worn off yet. But there's no justification to spend any money to fix this camera. If I really wanted a nice example of the type, I'd just buy a nice example next time. But it does seem that a $10 Leica would get different treatment.