Who invented it first?

Dez

Dez

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There used to be a joke that Russians would claim that their countrymen had invented almost everything before the generally recognized inventors, and in some cases, that is probably true. I had never thought that this would extend to the rather derivative FSU camera industry, where patents seemed to be only a minor inconvenience, and the first FEDs were advertised as 'The Soviet Leica".

Through the 50's, most of the innovations seemed to be coming out of Japan. But there is one interesting new design where I am not so sure at all. This is the rotating shutter index, which allowed the shutter speed to be set accurately before or after winding the shutter. This appeared in 1954 on the Canon IVSB2, and the other stripped-down versions of the same camera. This design remained until Canon introduced a non-rotating shutter dial with the Canon VI a few years later. So another Japanese innovation, right?

Maybe not. Also in 1954 came the rather scarce Zorki 2, which has the same shutter design. Interestingly, the FSU camera manufacturers did not continue to use this design; as far as I know, it was only ever seen on the Zorki 2, so maybe there were some manufacturing issues that outweighed the convenience.

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The Canon

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The Zorki

So who invented it first? Did one manufacturer copy it from the other? Why did the Russkis drop it? I would be very interested to hear more from the list members about this bit of fascinating camera trivia.

Cheers,
Dez
 
The Italian Iso Bilux of 1950 and the Iso Standard of 1953 RF cameras had the two piece shutter dial, they just reversed the index mark to the shutter speed numbers of what Canon and the Soviets did on their camera shutter speed dials.
 
xayraa33 said:
The Italian Iso Bilux of 1950 and the Iso Standard of 1953 RF cameras had the two piece shutter dial, they just reversed the index mark to the shutter speed numbers of what Canon and the Soviets did on their camera shutter speed dials.
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COOL! You mean the index was on a ring surrounding the shutter speed nunmbers? Do you have a picture???

Cheers,
Dez
 
Dez said:
Maybe not. Also in 1954 came the rather scarce Zorki 2, which has the same shutter design. Interestingly, the FSU camera manufacturers did not continue to use this design; as far as I know, it was only ever seen on the Zorki 2,
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Nope, the FED-2 had it as well - a year later though, so it probably got it from the Zorki. They probably reverted to an external index on the later FEDs and Zorkii because that looks more like the external indices on cameras with static time knob - the rotating index had been the last improvement on spinning knob designs, but it made that fact more obvious and hence did look less modern...
 
mind you The Exakta camera could take the cake for this shutter dial set up after all.
 
Dez said:
Oh my! How could I have forgotten the Exaktas? So the idea came from the Germans after all, and everyone else had that model to copy.
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Maybe - but the concentric knob already was around before Ihagee had even started, might have British or French origins and could even date back to the 19th century. Mentors and Nettel Deckrullo's (and probably many similar SLRs and strut folders from that period) had it before WWI. And Mentor supposedly had copied British SLRs, while Nettel was cloning French strut folders.
 
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Stuart John said:
My Zorki C and FED2 have that kind of dial. Wonder why they didi not coninue with it.
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As I said, probably looks. Just about every new camera that came out in the sixties had a static time knob. They were falling behind, but non-concentric rotating time knobs at least look like static ones - except for the moments when the shutter fires or is cocked...
 
Dez said:
Interestingly, the FSU camera manufacturers did not continue to use this design; as far as I know, it was only ever seen on the Zorki 2, so maybe there were some manufacturing issues that outweighed the convenience.
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It first appeared on the Zorki 2 (amongst the FSUs), that's true but they did continue it. It's also found on the Zorki C, 2C, 5 and 6, most FED 2 models and also some FED 3a models (early ones, I think). It must have been more expensive and complicated to make and assemble though, that's probably why later models didn't use it.
 
As I said, probably looks. Just about every new camera that came out in the sixties had a static time knob. They were falling behind, but non-concentric rotating time knobs at least look like static ones - except for the moments when the shutter fires or is cocked...
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But the Zenit remained this feature till the last EM model untill they made a static knob. I think it was hard to combine with the slow speeds. The slow speeds can't be set before winding in this construction anyhow. Some early Fed 3 models had such a knob with slow speeds combined. But these are quite rare.

They've put more energy in developing the Zenit then the Zorki or Fed, it was the winning product of their range.
 
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