Stash of BNIB Smena's found in warehouse...

The former USSR left-over camera market is well covered with a plethora of sellers who have fine-tuned the basic capitalist concept of profit: buy low in the east and sell high in the west. The Lomo boys -MBA types looking for a quick buck, grabbed most of that market. I doubt that 30 years after the collapse of the USSR any 'hidden' treasures remain.
 
If it was a load of minty new Kiev 2 or Kiev 2a from the 1950s then it would be really exciting news.
 
Smena is camera which was made in tens of millions. And here is barely any difference between LNIB and used one. On how it looks.

How it performs might be different story. Anything made in USSR has different quality status. "Brak" was common stage of badly assembled, made goodies. It supposed to be destroyed. But in late Soviet they didn't and it was kept elsewhere after it was stolen or given instead of salary. Those which were giving instead of salary might be still good.

Smena is known to be crap camera right from the factory. It was Soviet alternative for P&S. Not only light leaks on later models, but misaligned focus.
 
As balance:-

https://austerityphoto.co.uk/perestroika-shooting-lomo-smena-35-review/

I liked the B&W photo of the river...

The problem to me seems to be that all USSR cameras are tarred with the same brush and I don't believe it to be true; I read about a lot of different makes of camera on these forums and they all seem to fail from time to time but people only rant about the USSR made ones; show me a dozen rants about any other make and I'll change my mind.

My 2d worth is that cameras must be looked after and, if neglected, will fail. Add to that some ham fisted attempts to repair them at home and the scene is set but, as I said, people only rant about USSR QC not German or Japanese etc, which is daft. Especially when I read about people trying to repair cameras at home and it all going badly wrong. No one else seems to notice this, or meters failing or light leaks or anything other than USSR ones. It's very unfair to Konstantin, IMO.


Regards, David
 
I am not an expert on former USSR cameras by any stretch. I've lived there for a number of years, and confirm that all photographers -amateurs and professional alike, ditched their Soviet gear and made sacrifices to replace it as soon as they could. Mostly to do with the inferior performance of their existing gear, and with the transition from analogue to digital photography. Cheers, OtL
 
Out to Lunch said:
I am not an expert on former USSR cameras by any stretch. I've lived there for a number of years, and confirm that all photographers -amateurs and professional alike, ditched their Soviet gear and made sacrifices to replace it as soon as they could. Mostly to do with the inferior performance of their existing gear, and with the transition from analogue to digital photography. Cheers, OtL
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Thousands of people all over the world got rid of their film cameras of every make possible when digital came along. They all turned up in charity shops and collectors pounced on them. I can remember buying K1000's, T3's and OM's for really silly prices and lenses and XA's for pennies...

I'm not disputing what you say, btw, merely pointing out that other conclusions can be drawn from it.

It's like looking at sales on ebay, they don't mean that the cameras are NBG and that no one wants them, despite the fact that thousands sell and a proportion don't. And dozens of reasons can be given for the sales and non-sales and nothing much proved.


Regards, David
 
I'm pretty happy with my Lubitel 166U, worked great right out of the box and still does.
 
I'm kind of amazed that there are still so many film cameras out there that have never been used. It would be cool to have a 35mm counterpart to my Lubitel.
 
A seller in Canada was selling off a small cache of Exakta VX500's on eBay recently - one of the last genuine Exakta SLR models (from the late sixties I believe). These were unopened and new-in-the-box, complete with Pancolar lenses. I bought one, but I simply can't bring myself to use it as it looks so cool, brand spanking new and all!
 
This is equivalent to staring each day at unused brand new film in a box. It would be too damaging to unwrap the film from its box. :)
 
David Murphy said:
A seller in Canada was selling off a small cache of Exakta VX500's on eBay recently - one of the last genuine Exakta SLR models (from the late sixties I believe). These were unopened and new-in-the-box, complete with Pancolar lenses. I bought one, but I simply can't bring myself to use it as it looks so cool, brand spanking new and all!
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But it’s a mechanical device with congealing East German lubricants sitting in a box. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “tear that box down!”
 
Stealing in large quantities during the collapse of the Soviet Union was a common thing. Someone was not lucky enough to work at the camera factory. Those who worked with oil and gas now own football clubs in London.
 
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