Russian 35mm SLR, Zenit E w/ Helios 44-2 f/2 58mm Lens

Russian 35mm SLR, Zenit E w/ Helios 44-2 f/2 58mm Lens

 Hello world.  My name is Lita Kelley and this is my first post for my new blog about my antique and vintage camera collection.  You probably already guessed that I'm a photographer, which should be obvious, I guess, but it's important for me to mention it in order to tell the story of how I got into collecting antique and vintage cameras.  I'm not sure why I think this, because I'm not convinced that anyone would collect antique and vintage cameras unless they were a photographer, right?  But I'm not a writer, and I need to start somewhere, so, that's that.

This Russian 35mm SLR camera is a Zenit-E with a Helios 44-2 f/2 58mm lens, a cold war era relic of the former Soviet empire, made in the USSR, and it's partly the lens itself that started me off in getting into the hobby of collecting antique and vintage cameras.

The reason I say partly is because this Zenit-e is not the first vintage camera in the collection, although it is the first one I purchased and things grew from there.

My wife Amanda had a Minolta SRT202 with an f/1.4 50mm lens displayed on top of her dresser the entire time we've lived in this apartment... almost 3yrs now, and it belonged to her step father.   The shutter button is stuck, and the film advance lever is broken, but she kept it because it belonged to her dad. It is no longer displayed on her dresser, but now proudly occupies a space on the shelf with additional vintage film cameras.

It was when we first moved into this apartment that I first saw Amanda's Minolta, and naturally I marveled over it, and began reminiscing over the days back when I loved to shoot with my first camera, a Canon AE-1, while I was a student at UMass taking my first photography class, and I told Amanda that I'd love to someday have a small collection of old film cameras on display on a shelf on the wall, maybe even shoot film again too.

Well, that small collection of vintage film cameras didn't start to happen until February of this year, and now I'm sharing that collection and story here with you.

For my birthday,  I decided to buy my self a new Nikon D3400, and I needed some prime lenses to go with it, and so, while looking around on eBay for a 50mm prime lens for my Nikon, I came across & learned about the Helios 44-2 58mm and I wanted one to use with my Nikon.

Strangely, it was immediately right after I learned about the Helios 44-2 that I coincidentally found this Zenit-e at a local thrift shop,along with the lens I wanted, so I bought it, and when I got home I got on eBay and purchased an adapter to use the lens with my Nikon.  I was very thrilled about this.

Unfortunately, this Zenit-e has an issue with the shutter speed being too slow, so I'm not likely to waste money shooting film with it, although I will be using the lens for certain.

And so now there were two vintage cameras, and putting the two together side by side, I said to Amanda "I want to get more old film cameras", which I of course did, and I'll write posts about each of those too.

A few days ago I was bored and dying to get out and do some more photograhy, but I could not go out to take photos outside because of the snow storm and I was anxious to be doing some shooting, so I decided to photograph my cameras, and today I'm starting off this blog.

I love photography, I love the history of photography, I love the old cameras, and I love reading about the various models, the periods they were made, the histories, the places they were made and so on, and I think it's a lot of fun to be creative, starting off with creating beautiful images of the cameras themselves, and someday I will actually shoot film with them and write about those experiences here as well, but I'm a financially poor person, so it won't be soon, because film and processing cost money, something I no longer have enough of these days... so I'm going to put some advertising on my blog, and I can use the earnings from that to buy film. :)

After getting my Zenit-e, I ended up reading several various articles about not only this particular camera, but various other Soviet era cameras of the cold war period of the former USSR, and I think they're amazing, beautiful works of photographic history, and hope to acquire several more Russian cameras in the future.  I love them and although I love the looks of various models from different places, manufacturers and eras, etc, I think perhaps the Soviet ones, along with German, etc are my favorites so far, I just love the looks and styles of them, but vintage Nikons are also a favorite too.  No, I don't think I will focus on any one specific type or model, nope. 

I'm very excited by all of this and look forward to expanding my collection, doing more photography, and adding to my new blog.   I guess that's all I have to say for now.  I'm off to go photograph the Minolta SRT202 now, since I brought it up in this post, it makes sense to me that it should be my next post here.