Zorki

Zorki (Russian: Зоркий, meaning sharp-sighted) is a series of 35mm rangefinder cameras manufactured in the Soviet Union between 1948 and 1978.

The Zorki was a product of the Krasnogorsk Mechanical Factory (KMZ), which also produced the Zenit single lens reflex camera (SLR).

It offers a number of improvements over the original Zorki, including a large combined viewfinder with the rangefinder builtin, a removable back, and a larger and faster Jupiter-8 (Zeiss Sonnar copy) lens.

It also adds a new mechanism for slow shutter speeds with a separate selector dial on the front of the camera.

This mechanism was unreliable, so the improved Zorki 3M of 1954 (also produced in 1955) combines all of the shutter speeds on a single dial.

At least two hand-built prototypes of this camera are known to exist, and the KMZ archives list it as a "project", but it never went into production.

Like early Leicas, the Zorki 5 is loaded with film by removing the bottom plate.

The Zorki 10 is a modern-style 35mm rangefinder camera with a selenium light meter and shutter priority automatic exposure introduced in 1964.

Apertures from 2.8 to 22 with constant shutter speed of 1/30 s can be set in manual mode, intended for use with an electronic flash.