KMZ Zenit-B

Around 1970, the obvious camera to compare the Zenit-B with was the Pentax Spotmatic. The Pentax had a through-the-lens meter, a shutter that ran to 1/1000, and Takumar lenses that stopped themselves down at the moment of exposure. The Zenit-B had none of that. What it did have was a heavy body and an M42 thread that took the very same Takumars, at a fraction of the Spotmatic's price. In Britain it was sold as the Prinzflex 500, in America as the Kalimar SR100, in Germany as the Revueflex-B, and elsewhere as the Zenith-B, so the badge did not always say where it was made.

Underneath, this is a Zenit-E with the meter taken out. Body and cloth shutter are the same, as is the instant-return mirror, but the selenium cell is gone. The Cyrillic badge reads Zenit-V, because the Russian letter that looks like a B is pronounced V. KMZ made 889,617 of them, mostly between 1968 and 1973, then ran off a last batch of 2,150 in 1977. Nathan Dayton reports that a few were built with the older M39 thread instead of M42.

Using one takes patience. The body has no automatic diaphragm, so a lens that stops itself down on a Spotmatic stays wide open here until you close it by hand. The kit lens was usually an Industar-50 50mm f/3.5 or a Helios-44 58mm f/2, and the Helios-44-2 makes the routine easy with its preset ring: set the taking aperture, focus wide open, then turn the ring to the stop and watch the finder go dark. Wind before you set the speed, not after. When the shutter fires it makes a solid mechanical clack, and the mirror is back in the finder before the noise has died away.

The shutter is where it pinches. Speeds run from 1/30 to 1/500 plus B, and flash syncs only at 1/30. Load ISO 400 film on a bright beach and even f/16 at 1/500, the smallest stop on a Helios and the fastest the shutter offers, still lets in about a stop too much light. Slower film or a neutral density filter is the fix. Daylight fill flash at 1/30 in full sun is not a realistic plan either. Anything slower than 1/30 means a tripod and the B setting.

No meter also means nothing inside to fade. A Zenit-E's selenium cell weakens with age, and an old one may read badly or not at all. Next to a Zenit-E, the B has one less thing to have failed. Take a reading with the Zone Light Meter app and you have the meter KMZ left out; set what it tells you and shoot. The body suits students learning exposure by hand, and anyone who wants a cheap first camera for a bag of M42 glass.

Prices are low, well below a working Spotmatic. Anyone choosing the E for its meter should expect the cell to be weak or dead, which makes the gap between the two smaller than the spec sheets suggest. Whichever you pick, check the cloth curtains for pinholes against a bright window and fire a few frames at 1/500 with the back open to see that the slit crosses the whole gate. On a body this simple, the shutter is the part that decides whether it is worth carrying.