A Couple of Swells, the Futura-S and the Fed Zarya

I thought PN members might be interested in a couple of recent acquisitions, the Futura-S and the Fed Zarya.. I've paraphrased information abot them from camera.wiki.

 

 

After the war the Futura Kamerawerk GmbH founder Fritz Kuhnert built a new factory in Gundelfingen, Freiburg, after an earlier factory was destroyed. The Futura S of 1952 was made for Futura's interchangeable lenses. The "S" stood for Synchro-Compur. It's a very nicely made 35mm rangefinder. About 9,000 were made before production ended in 1958. Mine has the Futura-Evar 50mm F.2.0 lens. The ones with the faster F/1.5 lenses are much sought after.

 

The lenses were named after Kuhnert's family members - Elor after his wife Eleonore, Evar und Petar after his children Eva und Peter.

 

 

The Zarya is a 35mm film Viewfinder camera, made by F.E. Dzerzhinsky, (FED) Kharkov, Ukraine, between 1959-61, quantity 141.288 copies. The Zarya is also known as the FED Zarya. Zarya (=Заря) means 'Dawn'. It's an economy version of the FED-2b, intended for the Soviet domestic market. It has a simplified top housing without rangefinder, self timer or slow shutter speeds and normally came with an Industar-26m 52mm f/2.8 lens

 

 

 

Mine came fitted with the faster F/2.0 Jupiter 8, which I think looks rather nice on it. According to the inscription on the base, it was presented to someone in 1963. Can anyone read Russian?

 

Thats it and thank you for looking.

Edited December 3, 2020 by John Seaman

Great acquisitions, John, just the sort of input the Forum needs. I've come across the pretty Futura, but the Zarya is one I've never even read about. Fascinating stuff, and I hope you'll post some of the results from both cameras. Thanks for your typically interesting and informative post.

Nice finds. Have seen the Zarya a few times at auction for reasonable prices, but not in the condition your example is in. I like the minimalist styling.

The inscription reads: To comrade E. V. Prokopovich from GVP. February 2, 1963.

Thanks for the comments, and Jim, for the translation. I'm hardly doing any film photography at the moment. All the events and places I like to visit are closed, and I've got a long list of cameras waiting to be used. So it goes.

Good for you.

 

Like so many Soviet cameras, the FED has some similarities to some German cameras, doesn't it? o_O