Zenit 122

There can be few UK photo enthusiasts who haven’t handled a Zenith camera whilst growing up. I’m not sure how well these cameras travelled. In the US for example, I’ve seen and heard of people using Zorki equipment that was from Russia at the time (now Ukraine), so perhaps well? In the 70’s and well into the 80’s a Zenith camera was often a first SLR camera, and this was the case with me. My first SLR was the Zenith 11. At the time in the UK they were imported by TOE (Technical Optical Equipment). They also imported Russian telescopes, microscopes and I remember the back page of their catalogue showing a fridge and a radio! You may notice I refer to the Zenith camera rather than Zenit as marked on the camera. This was due to a spelling mistake in the original TOE catalogue , and so in the UK anyway – it stuck!

The Zenit 122 is (almost) the last in line of a series of cameras manufactured by KMZ (Krasnogorsk Mechanical Plant) in Russia. They also made a 16mm movie camera that I wrote about, and my earlier Zeith 11 here!

The 122 was made between 1990 and 2005. One later model the 122K followed and was pretty much exactly the same, but with the Pentax K mount. Shutter is a horizontal-travel cloth focal-plane shutter with speeds of 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, and B. Pretty much every other manufacturer of the time had got to at least 1000th if not 2000th, but then how often do we actually use such speeds? The main worry is that it’s cloth!

The lens is the (famous/infamous) Helios 44, or one of it’s many derivatives, it’s a good lens, fine for 35mm, nothing spectacular in my view, not terrible either. It’s has a manual aperture. The surprise in use, is that for me accustomed to having a 40mm or 35mm most often on the camera the 58mm focal length seems telephoto! Perfect for portraits I suppose, but too long for me!

Of course I put a film in it! Bulk loaded Foma 200 is my thing at the moment with 30.5 meters on the go will remain so for most of my winter shooting! The results are fine – again it’s a case of “Why is film photography so cheap!!!”