Soviet exposure guides & tables

tho60

tho60

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Dear Buddies!

When the first Zorkis were made, exposure meters were not common. I have already seen a strange card for calculating exposure, but I cannot read the Cyrillic letters. How to use it?

An other tool for proper exposure is the Fotoexponometr. Could someone translate the inscriptions? I would like to make an English equivalent.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anssipuisto/4495054316/

Thanks!
 

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Look on ebay or anywhere for that matter and you'll find dozens in English but they'll usually be the Johnson's version or Nebro's.

Johnson's version comes for daylight and artificial light and colour (depending on the age) and Nebro's is a bit rarer. Kodak did them as well (card not plastic) and look around as there's lots more. The elderly Wellcome diary and exposure record has one at the back, f'instance.

I'll dig mine out and take a rough photograph if it will help.

Regards, David
 
Photo's

Photo's

Here is a picture of a few of them.

Calulators-1-L.jpg


And the books I mentioned with them in them. The closed one is from 1915 and the open one from 1963.

Calulators-2-L.jpg


And here's the 1915 one open.

Calulators-3-L.jpg


I hope this is some use.

Regards, David
 
tho60 said:
Dear Buddies!

When the first Zorkis were made, exposure meters were not common. I have already seen a strange card for calculating exposure, but I cannot read the Cyrillic letters. How to use it?

An other tool for proper exposure is the Fotoexponometr. Could someone translate the inscriptions? I would like to make an English equivalent.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anssipuisto/4495054316/

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I too would be interested in a translation of the words on the card. I have an identical item which came with a 1952 Kiev-3. I have seen number of plastic cards in the leather cases of Zorki cameras, but they have been blank. I wonder if they originally had a printed exposure guide that has been erased.
 
You were lucky, I had to buy mine after a long search.

FED, Leica and Zorki had a pocket at the back of the ERC for things. Leica had a folded card (to make 4 pages) that was an exposure guide. All of them had white plastic cards for writing notes on.

840179713_PWf3z-XL.jpg


The exposure guide,a plastic card and an Leitz NY certificate to say that tax had been pain on the camera (quoting its serial number). There was a version for Great Britain and probably every other country.

Regards, David
 
This table from the photo is nothing more, then elaborated rule of sunny-16. The one on Your picture is quite complicated, with compensation for the month, and for the hour of the day. It is calculated for latitudes between Kiev and Leningrad, today's Sankt Peterburg, and comes with three sensitivity scales: Russian Gost, German DIN and something I don't know, where ISO 250 is represented by number 3000, but not quite linear like ASA or ISO. Nevertheless the user have to decide the weather conditions, so we are back at "Sunny-16". This tables were made for people, who didn't master the basics of photography and are good only for general picture taking. Like on vacation, forget more complicated lighting situations.
 
exposure card

exposure card

Dear Buddies!

Thanks a lot for your photos and explanation. You are the kindest guys all over the world. But the problem of the single exposure card remained open: what it is, how to use it? These cards were attached mainly to the early Kiev cameras. In the camera cases there were a tiny pocket for them.
 
tho60 said:
I have already seen a strange card for calculating exposure, but I cannot read the Cyrillic letters
Click to expand...

On top of the card = Read exposure
Very bottom row =Calculated exposure
Three lines on penultimate row= Part of second, Seconds, Minutes

Vertical text - could not read it, too small letters...
 
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