ZENIT ES SLR Manual Focus 35mm Film Camera Body M42

-: Sheffield's ebay drop off store :-

You are bidding for an Excellent condition ZENIT- E ~ ES SLR Manual Focus 35mm Film Camera Body M42

This is a very early Model, It's marked only as a ZENIT E not ES and it doesn't have the extended viewfinder eyepiece.

Russian made by KMZ ( Krasnogorskiy Mechanicheskiy Zavod "Krasnogorsk Mechanical Plant" )

KMZ was the primary manufacturer of optical devices during WW2. They were rewarded for this by receiving the all of the captured Carl Zeiss & German optical data and lens manufacturing equipment from Dresden to produce and copy. This caused them to be come the primary optical design and development facility in the Soviet Union and created such Camera product lines like the Zorkis, Zenits, Horizons and Moskvas and Legandary Lenses like the Jupiter's Tair's Mir's and Helios's.

UK imported ZENIT's Quality Control was carried out by T.O.E ( Technical & Optical Equipment Ltd)

Technical & Optical Equipment (London) Ltd. were the only authorized British importers of Soviet cameras & lenses. Founded in 1962, they gained a reputation as responsible sellers, because they took apart every camera & lens in their own repair facilities for calibration and repair before feeding them to the UK market.

This model is a modified Zenit E for the Photosniper & a Tair-3-PhS 4.5/300 mm Telephoto. It added a connector so that the trigger in the stock could fire the camera. The earliest cases had a brass knob instead of the later plastic. The early metal cases were silver instead of black.

This Camera has a M42 mount is known as the Praktica thread mount. Since there were no proprietary elements to the M42 mount, many other manufacturers used it; this has led to it being called the Universal thread mount or Universal screw mount by many. The M42 mount was popularized in the United States by Pentax; thus, it is also known as the Pentax thread mount, despite the fact that Pentax did not originate it. The M42 mount was the most widely used lens mount in the world.

PICTURES ARE OF ACTUAL CAMERA YOU WILL BE GETTING

The camera will accept any M42 Lens with manual or automatic aperture control. It's a simple, solidly built (like a T34 tank) and its a fully controllable camera & It take pictures without batteries!

This camera is in EXCELLENT nr MINT cosmetic condition. The light meter appears to be working fine. It fires and winds great. The felt light seals appear to be good. There are a few specks of dust in the viewfinder which would not affect the pictures. The focus screen clean and scratch free, The mirror also is clean and scratch free.

Please see picture included for confirmation of the cosmetic condition.

ZENIT SLR cameras have a reputation for good solid construction. They are the most produced Camera in the world with 12 million being produced.

They were very popular among professional and amateur photographers in the 70's - 80's