To paint or not to paint????

[Dez]

I have a couple of old FED items, a FED-C from 1941, with its f2.0 normal lens, and a 100mm f6.3 lens with an apparently non-standard focusing cam.

I notice that none of these has any paint highlighting the engravings, which makes it really hard to see the f-stops and distance scales except in full daylight. Later Russian cameras use black paint to fill in the engravings. Is this paintless state typical of the old FED equipment? Any ideas why it was left out? FED seemed to follow standard practice in most of what it did, why not that?

Cheers,

Dez