KMZ Zenit-TTL

Look above the lens of a Zenit-TTL for the honeycombed selenium window you would find on a Zenit-E, and all you get is bare black body. Krasnogorsk moved the meter inside. That one change, plus a rewind crank where the Zenit-EM had a knob, is most of what separates this camera from the EM it was built on. It is also why the TTL has become one of the cheapest ways to get a through-the-lens meter behind an M42 lens, and why it so often turns up with a Helios still screwed into the front.

The automatic diaphragm and the mechanical cloth shutter carried over from the EM unchanged. What changed is where the light gets measured. Because the reading now comes through whatever glass is mounted, a long telephoto or a deep red filter becomes part of the measurement instead of a correction you have to remember and do in your head. The crank is a small thing until you rewind a roll of 36 on an older Zenit and count the turns. Krasnogorsk built 1,632,212 of these between 1977 and 1985, and BelOMO at Vileyka made more on top of that, so you will not be hunting for one.

Using it is slow and deliberate. Focus wide open on the microprism spot, which sits inside a ring of clear matte, then stop the lens down to the aperture you plan to shoot and watch the needle in the finder until it settles on its mark. Change speed or aperture, match the needle, fire. On a tripod at a landscape this rhythm feels fine. On a street corner it is clumsy. The real weakness shows up in poor light at f/11 or f/16: the screen goes murky, the needle gets hard to see, and that is exactly when you wanted the meter most. Stop-down metering has always worked this way, and the TTL does nothing to soften it.

The shutter is the same rugged cloth focal-plane unit the M42 Zenits had been carrying for years, running from 1/30 to 1/500 plus B with a heavy clack you feel through the whole body. Flash syncs at 1/30 only, which makes daylight fill awkward in bright sun. The PX-13 cell powers the meter and nothing else. Pull it out and every speed still works, which goes a long way toward explaining how these cameras outlive drawers, drops and decades of neglect. It is heavy, though, and a day with one on your shoulder reminds you.

It usually sells for very little, and the Helios 44 on the front is often worth more than the body behind it. That makes it a common first manual camera for students and a cheap, correct-mount home for anyone who bought the lens first. An obvious alternative is the Praktica MTL 3, another stop-down M42 body with a CdS meter and speeds out to 1/1000; to my hands it is the nicer camera to hold. The Zenit wins on price and sheer numbers.

Check the meter before you trust it. After forty years plenty of these needles are dead, sluggish or optimistic, and the mercury cell the camera was designed around is no longer made. If yours has quit, take a reading with Zone Light Meter, set the speed and aperture by hand, and keep shooting. The shutter never needed the battery anyway.