My Second Russian

[kamera]

Already had a Russian Kiev 4M rangefinder, but recently got a Zenit B SLR on Ebay from a US dealer. Very good shape with only small brassing on black paint surfaces.
And the viewfinder has no specks; quite clean and clear.

Have a Helios-44-2 coming from Russia, but it will reportedly take 3-4 weeks.

One thing I read in one of the Russian Camera sites(and I cannot find it now) was a warning not to use Fuji film in them as their cassette is different in some aspect from Kodak's et al and will jamb the advance mechanism.
I cannot tell any visual difference when looking at a Fuji and Kodak 35mm cassette.

Can anyone offer me any clarification on this???

Ron Head
Kalamazoo, MI

[heath]

I have a Zenit B that has had the shutter mechanism jam. I am not sure what film I had in it when it jammed, but it may have ben Fuji Press 800. It lasted almost the entire roll before it packed it in. Fortunately I was able to save most of the roll. The lens I got with mine is the Industar 61L/Z 50/2.8. This is a great lens, especially if you are into macro photography. It is a preset lens, so it works great with my M-42/EOS adaptor on my 300D. I highly recommend this lens to anyone who uses M-42 mount SLR's.

I also recieved another Russian the other day. My Kiev IIIA arrived and is a great camera to use. I love it. I have the J-12 50/2 but I will be getting more lenses for it soon.

Heath

[physiognomy]

Ron, Congrat's re your new Zenit... I dont own any Russian slr's b/c I'm already addicted to the rangefinders and can hardly afford to start accumulating M-42's... I have not read anything about problems with Fuji film... Maybe someone else has some experience? Has your Helios arrived yet? I have a 50 f/1.8 in Contax mount that is a very good performer.

Heath, the J-12 is a 35mm f/2.8... Did you mean J-8 ?

Cheers!

Peter

[PeterW]

Ron Head wrote:

One thing I read in one of the Russian Camera sites(and I cannot find it now) was a warning not to use Fuji film in them as their cassette is different in some aspect from Kodak's et al and will jamb the advance mechanism.
I cannot tell any visual difference when looking at a Fuji and Kodak 35mm cassette.

I think I know the site you mean, Ron. It is in the introduction to a Zenit E instruction manual which Mike Butkus has on his website.

It reads: "The Zenith camera will accept all types of monochrome and color films, with the exception of any Fuji 35mm cassette.
The type of cassette used by this Company will cause jamming and may cause the film to tear."

As he scanned in the text with OCR and reset it I don't know if this was a warning from the original manual or added by Butkus. I looked at other sites which have scanned pages from Zenit user's manuals and couldn't find it. Instead I found: "Your Zenit will use all standard 35mm cassettes".

For what it's worth I have used Fuji film in a number of different Zenits and never had any jamming problems ... but that's no guarantee that other people haven't found a problem.

After reading your posting I opened new boxes of Agfa, Ilford and Fuji Sensia film (I hadn't got a Kodak one in my film box) and measured the cassette dimensions with a digital caliper. They were identical to within 0.08mm which I would imagine is within the manufacturing tolerance for mass produced stamped metal cassettes. Maybe the jamming is caused by something in the Fuji cassette or spool dimensions that I didn't measure.

Peter