Interesting Article on Fed and Kiev Factories Now

[Jocko]

I expect many people have already seen this - but I hadn't!

There is a very interesting article (dated April 2006) from a Ukrainian newspaper translated on the DVD website, here - http://www.dvdtechcameras.com/info/4.htm - dealing with the Ukrainian photographic industry and its collapse in the post communist world. There are some real surprises - FED has 5 years of cameras stockpiled!

Cheers, Ian

[lushd]

Thanks Ian - I enjoyed that and it made a point I have always believed in. If the post-Soviet world can make a T90 and export it then it could do anything in the industrial line. It's a question of vision and value.

If Comrade Stalin orders a digital soap tray you can be damn sure he'll get one.

[Jocko]

That's so right Donald - and its a bewildering failure that goes back way beyond the USSR. The world is the poorer for it.

Ian

[Trius]

So which brand new Fed models and lenses can we order? Do they have a website with secure ordering? :D

[xayraa33]

So which brand new Fed models and lenses can we order? Do they have a website with secure ordering? :D

probably the Fed 5c and 5b with the I- 61L/d lens

a lot of these were made and they do not seem to have been very popular.
some new ones can be had for cheap on that auction site.

[darkkavenger]

if they had 5 years of Fed-6 TTL that would be much more interesting ... OTOH xayraa33 is probably correct... I got a Fed-5 and it's a very decent performer, but I think they lack "character".

[xayraa33]

they are certainly not as sleek and compact as a Fed 1.

[PetarDima]

I think that good move will be to produce Fed I or Zorki I again, with faster lenses, of course.
1000 - 2000 pieces, like Cosina did.I think that for some fine price( 200$ or less) they can do business with rangefinder fans from this site.

[lushd]

Petar - I think you are so right. I would buy one or even two at that price. I don't think the chances are very good though.

[rxmd]

It's a question of vision and value.And one of demand, quality, large numbers of critical customers, and an industry that is fairly good at producing investment goods, especially anything weapon-related, and considerably worse at producing consumer goods and electronics.

Philipp

[PetarDima]

Petar - I think you are so right. I would buy one or even two at that price. I don't think the chances are very good though.

Well, I work for a 200$ for month, but buying a good mechanical camera for that money, that can be permanent solution for me... buy once, and next 10 years think about photography, not about equipment... * Strong metal body + 50mm f>2 lenses can be a good kit.But that's only a daydreaming ...

[ZorkiKat]

There are some real surprises - FED has 5 years of cameras stockpiled!

Cheers, Ian

Ian

Someone ought to suggest "Corporation FED" to offer their surplus stocks to some digital company in China or India. The FED-5 may be a suitable platform to build a cheap LTM rangefinder on. There's a guy from the photo.net board who
was building his own digital M on a Leica M2 body. Those FED-5 will make plenty of cheap digital RF cameras which will make us FED and Zorki fanatics very happy.
:D

Jay

[Jocko]

Ian

Someone ought to suggest "Corporation FED" to offer their surplus stocks to some digital company in China or India. The FED-5 may be a suitable platform to build a cheap LTM rangefinder on. There's a guy from the photo.net board who
was building his own digital M on a Leica M2 body. Those FED-5 will make plenty of cheap digital RF cameras which will make us FED and Zorki fanatics very happy.
:D

Jay

It's funny you should say that Jay! A while back I posted a half-serious thought about the potential for Arax style remanufacturing of Zorki 4s - I read that a Russian magazine had published plans for installing a TTL meter... When I read Max's FED TTL 6 lament I did just wonder if somehow, someone, somewhere...

But your digital idea is wonderful! I think we know it won't happen, but it certainly should - and if our Chinese friends can turn a Ukrainianm aircraft carrier into a theme park, they could surely do this ! :D


Cheers! Ian

[Ash]

wow... that's got me thinking.

So how difficult would it be to rewire an old digi cam onto the back of a cheap russian rangefinder? Aside from the advanced know-how needed.

I wonder how easy it would be to set up the sensor to the film plane first, and set it up directly to the LCD monitor, so no actual picture taking, then adjust some firmware for photo taking.

I think we should have a group RFF project on this!!

[Jocko]

wow... that's got me thinking.

So how difficult would it be to rewire an old digi cam onto the back of a cheap russian rangefinder? Aside from the advanced know-how needed.

I wonder how easy it would be to set up the sensor to the film plane first, and set it up directly to the LCD monitor, so no actual picture taking, then adjust some firmware for photo taking.

I think we should have a group RFF project on this!!

Ash - just look at what this fellow's done! - http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/m39var1/

Half way there!

Cheers, Ian!

[Ash]

wow... I'll give that a proper read later on tonight

[ZorkiKat]

wow... that's got me thinking.

So how difficult would it be to rewire an old digi cam onto the back of a cheap russian rangefinder? Aside from the advanced know-how needed.

I wonder how easy it would be to set up the sensor to the film plane first, and set it up directly to the LCD monitor, so no actual picture taking, then adjust some firmware for photo taking.

I think we should have a group RFF project on this!!

The sensor area in many of the P&S digicams are rather small. Those thumb-nail sized sensors would make the standard 50mm seem like a very very very long lens! :D

Jay

[ZorkiKat]

Ash - just look at what this fellow's done! - http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/m39var1/

Half way there!

Cheers, Ian!

Vladimir Rodionov is on the right path. He should give corporation FED a nudge...or he can be a good capitalist and buy all the remaining FED-5 stocks (before those crazy LOMO Society people get them) and start converting them to digiFEDs. :D



Jay

[Ash]

I was playing around last night, and you're right zorkikat, my 50mm was acting like a 150mm! Time to destroy some cheap binoculars or something for a lens to make the image smaller i thinks!


I still think fed/zorki/etc digicams would be a great idea. RFF could have a group of people here making them, and the profits could help run RFF :P

Plan:
Source very cheap digicams with a suitable megapixel count - cheaper the better, as their build quality would mean ease of disassembly.
Invest in a large amount of Fed/etc bodies, to get a huge bulk discount
Lay out a little "RFF" engraved on the top plate, with a limited edition number

:D

[dll927]

Interesting, although the translation leaves a little to be desired. (Maybe he also writes camera instruction books!)

No doubt the FSU (anyone in these threads should know what that means) is experiencing some 'teething problems'. But what do you expect of a country that has virtually no history of democratic functioning? Catherine the Great would probably not find things too strange even today. So it probably will take them a while, even to come up with Stalin's digital soap tray.

[zhang xk]

Ian

Someone ought to suggest "Corporation FED" to offer their surplus stocks to some digital company in China or India. The FED-5 may be a suitable platform to build a cheap LTM rangefinder on. There's a guy from the photo.net board who
was building his own digital M on a Leica M2 body. Those FED-5 will make plenty of cheap digital RF cameras which will make us FED and Zorki fanatics very happy.
:D

Jay

Jay Tongzhi, Nihao!

My Nikon Cool Pix 2000 has no view finder. A green light on the view screen shows correct focus. If the zoom lens was replaced with a LTM or M mount, it can be used as an interchangeable rangefinder Digital P/S. But the sensor size may be too small for most 35mm rangefinder lenses. The image quality of this Nikon is good enough for some 8" prints. Someone has to find a way to meet the demand for a cheap interchangeable lens digi-rangefiner camera. There are huge number of rangefnder lenses owners. With such a camera, we will have an easier and quicker way to tell the difference between a Summicron 50/2 and a Jupiter 8. :D

Cheers,

Zhang

[VinceC]

Sensor size is a problem when trying to adapt digital P&S sensors for interchangeable lenses. On my Canon G1, the 32mm-102mm equivalent zoom is actually a 7mm to 21mm lens. Most RF users aren't searching for wildly long telephotos, yet we're talking about a format where a 21mm lens -- traditionally our widest -- is equivalent to a 105mm.

It simply isn't practical to use that sensor size for any existing lineup of interchangeable lenses.

[Ash]

so is there any way of reversing that 'zoom factor' ?

I tried to take a piece from some old binoculars, can it be done that with the addition of an element or two, the focus is concentrated smaller for these small sensors?

[rxmd]

so is there any way of reversing that 'zoom factor' ?I guess optical quality would be significantly degraded, otherwise camera manufacturers would have been doing this for ages.

Does anybody have a link or a reference for this article with the FED 5 TTL conversion? If it's on paper, the name of the journal would be OK already.

Philipp

[ZorkiKat]

so is there any way of reversing that 'zoom factor' ?

I tried to take a piece from some old binoculars, can it be done that with the addition of an element or two, the focus is concentrated smaller for these small sensors?

A bigger sensor size is the only recourse. Something like the one found in the DSLRs which result in a 1,5-1,6X crop factor.

Jay

[ZorkiKat]

Jay Tongzhi, Nihao!

My Nikon Cool Pix 2000 has no view finder. A green light on the view screen shows correct focus. If the zoom lens was replaced with a LTM or M mount, it can be used as an interchangeable rangefinder Digital P/S. But the sensor size may be too small for most 35mm rangefinder lenses. The image quality of this Nikon is good enough for some 8" prints. Someone has to find a way to meet the demand for a cheap interchangeable lens digi-rangefiner camera. There are huge number of rangefnder lenses owners. With such a camera, we will have an easier and quicker way to tell the difference between a Summicron 50/2 and a Jupiter 8. :D

Cheers,

Zhang

Nihao Zhang tongzhi

I really believe that we should look to the east (China!) where practically everything is now made :D

FED could follow this model: The first DSLRs were really modified film SLR cameras. Fuji did it with their S-series DSLRs. They took existing Nikon film SLR bodies (F-60 for the S1 and F-80 for the S2 and S3) and built a digital back around it. The resulting digiFED-5 may end, big and ugly as it already is, even bigger and uglier, extending at the back and the bottom. Kodak also took the same approach when they made their DSLRs- often using a body from Nikon, or sometimes Canon. Epson did this too- the RD-1 still retains the original Voigtlaender form.

The current DSLRs are often smaller because they are really digital cameras which retained only the reflex system and lens mount of the earlier film SLRs.

Jay

[zhang xk]

Nihao Zhang tongzhi

I really believe that we should look to the east (China!) where practically everything is now made :D

FED could follow this model: Fuji did it with their S-series DSLRs. They took existing Nikon film SLR bodies (F-60 for the S1 and F-80 for the S2 and S3) and built a digital back around it. The resulting digiFED-5 may end, big and ugly as it already is, even bigger and uglier, extending at the back and the bottom. Kodak also took the same approach when they made their DSLRs- often using a body from Nikon, or sometimes Canon.

Jay

Hi Jay,

Another way of using existing rangefinder lenses is to extend their back focus distance by adding a lens element so that they can be used on some DLSRs. An Olympus E300 may be a good candidate as the back focus distance is shorter. A modified E300 without the mirror box, and a correct back focusing distance is an ideal Digi-rangefider. They have a correct size and a much bigger sensor size.

Cheers,

Zhang

[phototone]

I could be wrong, but I believe that current APS size sensors require a vertical running shutter, not a horizontal shutter such as Fed has.

[rxmd]

I believe that current APS size sensors require a vertical running shutter, not a horizontal shutter such as Fed has.
Why?

Philipp

[Malcolm_J]

I think the main problem is the FSU manufacturers have an inferiority complex about the apparent fanciness of Japanese cameras. I do not find the FED2 to be more complicated to use than a Japanese SLR. If anything it is easier, since you soon learn to guess exposures and you quickly learn what works and what does not work by studying your own pictures. Actually, having a simple camera encourages you to do this.

All that has been said before, just as it is evident that quaint, clunky cameras with a pre-war style and zero brand image in the Western world have no chance in our markets, which are dominated by advertising signals, by what is trendy and neat and makes you look slick and smart. If FED produced a digital that was otherwise the same as the traditional camera, I'd look at buying it. But very few others would, I suspect. One of the main reasons I don't have a digital (apart from being a cheapskate) is that I don't like the "feature overload" of DSLRs. Why can't they keep it simple? Japanese marketing practice - drown the consumer with fancies that create the illusion of progress. Yet there has been no progress where it counts. Very few DSLRs will take a noticeably better picture than a well-adjusted FSU rangefinder with a good lense.

At the very least, FED/Kiev etc could have made an effort in the early 1990s to exploit their cheapness, brilliant lenses and old-fashioned, timeless looks. They did not because a bureaucracy can never become an enterprise. This is a matter of the people who advance in a bureaucracy, who of course are quite different from the people who advance in a competitive enterprise. I have seen this with my own eyes, having worked in both types of organisation. I have even seen a bureaucracy attempt to change itself nto an enterprise - and fail hopelessly. The British privatisations of former monopoly utilities provide ample lessons in what happens when you fiddle with big organisations that don't want to change.

It boils down to an opportunity missed - and now the window is shut. They can't catch up and get into digital now. If they want to salvage anything at all, they ought to get on the net and push the rangefinder cult, offer products, services, high quality film development and so forth. It's a niche market, but niche markets can be profitable.