Why have the Russians never made digital cameras?

btgc said:
but you probably wouldn't call 'em cars, as you are used to know what is a car.
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You know, most Europeans would say the same about US made cars. It seems as if a cold war is not good for the car industry of either party - at least the last time around, the cars both produced eventually began to resemble armoured personnel carriers in every aspect except reliability and functionality...

As far as the USSR and digital cameras is concerned - they collapsed too soon to develop anything force-marketable to their COMECON satellites, and too late to have some Russian company start from scratch and develop anything globally marketable.
 
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zvos1 said:
No need for Russia to produce digital cameras, they'll just use German:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/siboma2009/4252826777/
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LOL ... funny to read the negative comments attached to that pic!

"How dare the Russian prez have a $27k camera!" ... damn some people need to get a life!


4252826777_98fac2198c.jpg
 
tom.w.bn said:
There is a nice story from the US-Russian race to the orbit. In the beginning of the space missions there was no ball-pen that was able to write in zero-gravity. US industry invested millions of dollars to build a ball-pen that solved this problem. The russians simply took a pencil up into space. Cost nothing. What is smarter engineering solution?
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that is an urban legend popping up once in a while that I honestly do not believe at all.
I mean, the part about investing "millions of dollars".

EDIT: ok i see that i woke up way too late for this :D

My girlfriend's father worked at the Arsenal's AR coating labs as developer.
They are all on the street now (he is old enough for early retirement).
The whole factory terrain is under dispute whether it should be sold to some iportant person at a very low price..
 
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btgc said:
Keith, are you kidding us? Are you speaking about same country which hasn't managed to build their own car? I'm not speaking about LADA's originating from old FIAT design, nor GAZ models with implanted Japanese engines. Well, they have some domestic cars but you probably wouldn't call 'em cars, as you are used to know what is a car.
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I guess by the latter you mean cars like the LuAZ-969, which is pretty basic and which hardly anyone in the West even knows.

On the other hand you have success stories like the Lada Niva, which was rather popular in the West and for a 1970s offroader was actually quite advanced. Or the KamAZ trucks which have won Paris-Dakar ten times since the mid-90s. So that's not what I call incapable of building their own cars.
 
Fascinating thread, including all of the wild tangents! :)

I'm half-Ukrainian (from my mother's side), so I suppose I have a bit of a soft spot for those rough-and-ready FSU cameras.

Someone mentioned earlier about the Soviet penchant for industrial espionage. There is a story (I will have to dig up the source material) I read about how the Soviets infiltrated the Canadian oil industry to 'borrow' technology related to valves, electronic switching etc. for hydrocarbon flow.

The RCMP (pre-CSIS) learned of this, so they deliberately planted a major flaw in the software of the pipeline technology. A few months later, there was a massive unexplained explosion at a natural gas plant in the Russian Soviet Republic ... and the Soviets never said a word. Of course.

In fact, the Soviet fascination with copyright / patent theft could be the subject for an amazing book if you think about it. Chapters could include: the 'Buran' space shuttle, the 'Concordski', the Contax & Leica LTM copies, the LC-A (a blatant copy of the Cosina), ... I'm sure there's lots more than I can think of at the moment.

A final note: a friend of mine works for CSIS (the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service) here in Western Canada. He said to me one evening at a wine-soaked party that one of the biggest threats facing Canada at the moment is ... Russian industrial espionage and patent theft.

Some things never change! They just better not steal our designs for our maple syrup and hockey rinks!
 
Soviet, and then Russian, digital cameras were flown into space many times since late 1980s. Not exactly mainstream though.
 
Digital Horizon:
http://www.digifotopro.nl/artikel/2330029/photokina-digitale-zenit-horizon-d-l3-video-

Supposed to ship in April 2011 and priced between 1000 and 1500 Euros.

The photo of the camera looks to be the same as the one at Zenit's site.
3 separate sensors--one for each of the three lenses--of 5MP each to give a 12MP file. I think, based on the google translated page.

Roger, your info of 10MP sensors makes more sense, though. Did you or Frances get to take any photos with it?
Rob
 
Pherdinand said:
that is an urban legend popping up once in a while that I honestly do not believe at all.
I mean, the part about investing "millions of dollars".
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I assumed that it was a governmental task to develop such a pen. As we all know, everything ordered by government or an organisation with a governmental structure like the NASA costs factor 10 or 100. So you don't get much for a few million dollars.
 
rxmd said:
I guess by the latter you mean cars like the LuAZ-969, which is pretty basic and which hardly anyone in the West even knows.

On the other hand you have success stories like the Lada Niva, which was rather popular in the West and for a 1970s offroader was actually quite advanced. Or the KamAZ trucks which have won Paris-Dakar ten times since the mid-90s. So that's not what I call incapable of building their own cars.
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I fully agree Soviet engineers were creative and sometimes manufacturing industry even allowed to implement some good ideas into usable products. Dakar trucks probably aren't typical examples as any of those cars are almost fully rebuilt and share mostly name with mass models. But then it takes serious efforts and money to adopt or build car for this rally.

varjag said:
Soviet, and then Russian, digital cameras were flown into space many times since late 1980s. Not exactly mainstream though.
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I rather believe in this. Soviets could make anything top grade for military needs. Even if citizens would live in society lagging decades after rest of the world.

But there were also good points. Soviet families didn't poison themselves with foods stuffed with artificial aditives nor used microwave owens.
 
As far as Russians knocking off Leica, I have say they defeated and captured half of Germany so it gives them certain rights to use the technology of their defeated and conquered foe.

And they took probably the best photo of WII with that young Russian sergeant with the red flag on the top of bombed out Reichstag.

Russian%20flag%20over%20the%20Reichstag.jpg
 
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GSNfan said:
As far as Russians knocking off Leica, I have say they defeated and captured half of Germany so it gives them certain rights to use the technology of their defeated and conquered foe.

And they took probably the best photo of WII with that young Russian sergeant with the red flag on the top of bombed out Reichstag.
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I don't know what you want to say with you first paragraph but the photo was staged and heavily retouched to make it more dramatic. But still a very iconic photo of the war time. But was it taken with a digital camera :rolleyes:
 
tom.w.bn said:
I don't know what you want to say with you first paragraph but the photo was staged and heavily retouched to make it more dramatic. But still a very iconic photo of the war time. But was it taken with a digital camera :rolleyes:
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What I'm trying to say is that according to rules of war you can use the technology of those you defeated and that is not knocking off.

As far as that photo is concerned, its posed, not staged.

For that photo to be staged would mean the whole war was staged and the whole scene in the background would had to be 'staged'.

Its a real photo and best WWII photo imo. I liked this photo long before i even picked up photography.
 
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