Gearing up for the Crappy Commie Camera Party, Part 1: The Zenit 11
Starting in June 2025 is the next iteration of the Shitty Camera Challenge, the Crappy Commie Camera Party (or CCCP for short). It’s intended to be a celebration of all things Soviet made, so Soviet-era cameras up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, about 1989.
Now I have plenty of Soviet era cameras, more in fact than I had thought. There’s the stereo Lomo Sputnik with its single working shutter speed, the wonderful Smena 8M, the (still untried) Cosmic Symbol, the panoramic Horizont, and a couple of Lomo LC-As. Oh, and not forgetting the Rapid format Lomo Smena SL. So I have plenty of options to choose from. But then, as always happens, chance intervened.
Just recently, Harman Technology released a new emulsion, Harman Red. This is a redscaled version of Harman Phoenix, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on a few rolls of pre-production Harman Red thanks to their Marketing department, who had seen and liked some of my own attempts at redscaling Phoenix. After its release, a user on Bluesky posted some wonderful macro images with Harman Red, and I was really taken with these as I had previously thought about trying to do something similar. The snag is, I don’t have any analogue cameras that can make decent macro images.
Coincidentally, one of my mutuals on BlueSky posted about her experiments with freelensing using redscale film, and of course that I really wanted to try. I’ve attempted freelensing before, where you disengage the camera lens from the body and hold it a couple of cm, or less, away from the camera. I’d even tried reversing the lens, which can result in some lovely dreamy looking macro images. The snag is that these have always been digital, and I’m really scared of getting dust on my digital sensors.
I had already considered combining the CCCP with a bit of freelensing, but dismissed it as I already have enough old Soviet era cameras to play with. But then my mutual friend played her ‘ace’ card: ‘I think it would really suit your experimental approach’, she wrote, and of course after laying down that challenge I just had to reconsider. I turned to the Kamerastore website, the source of all my crappy cameras, and searched for Zenit. Several options popped up, but this jet black Zenit 11, with Cyrillic writing really caught my eye.
It was in the ‘Not Passed’ category, with ‘flaws that will affect typical use’, but in this case it was that the ‘light meter doesn’t work properly and the light seals should be changed. Otherwise it is in good working condition!’ Well, then, that was perfect. I should add that back in the day, when I was looking for my first ‘real’ film camera (an SLR in those days, without the ‘D’), I would scour the adverts in Amateur Photographer looking for the best deal. There were loads of options for Zenits and Prakticas, but I dismissed those out of hand, and went for a Canon instead. What would my 20-something-year-old me think of that today?
At nearly 700g, the Zenit 11 is a heavyweight. Indeed, it’s been likened to a Russian tank in many a YouTube review. It’s a manual focus 35mm SLR camera produced in the Soviet Union from 1981 to 1990. The Zenit features shutter speeds from 1/30s-1/500s (+ B, and 1/30s is also the flash sync speed) and the meter can be dialled in for film speeds from ISO 25-400. The actual production date of the camera can be determined from the first two numbers of the serial number, and mine was made in 1986.
Like most Soviet cameras it has its little foibles, in this case how the exposure is measured through the selenium cell window on the front of the pentagram, and the means of disengaging the wind-on to rewind the film once it’s fully exposed. Other than that it’s a fairly straightforward single lens reflex camera. It uses the common M42 screw thread, and at the time it came with a Helios-44M f/2 58mm lens. These are quite highly sought after nowadays, mainly because the front or rear lenses can be flipped for spectacular bokeh effects.
My Zenit 11 didn’t come with a lens, but I have a Pentacon 50mm f1.8 lens that since it was made in East Germany, is also ‘CCCP compliant’. This lens was also from the ‘Not Passed’ category on the Kamerastore website — the aperture is stuck at the widest aperture position — and though I thought this wasn’t an obstacle, it turned out that even at its fastest shutter speed the camera would be over exposing most films. I therefore needed a ‘Plan B’.
I turned back to the Kamerastore website and found two contenders: A Cosina 50mm f1.8 Cosinon Auto lens, and an Industar 50-2, a 50mm f3.5 lens. The Cosina lens was in the ‘Not Passed’ category, with ‘some scratches on the outer elements and may affect the image quality … [and the] focusing is a tad bit dry’. In contrast, the Industar-50-2 was in lovely condition.
The Cosina, of course, is Japanese made, so I won’t have a complete CCCP camera/lens combination for close-up work, but the Industar-50-2 was made in Soviet factories like KMZ, so it’s perfect. It’s also so tiny! It’s really similar looking to the Tessar-style lenses in the Smena range, and I reckon at some stage that I’ll try it out with the M42-mount adapter on the Olympus Pen mirrorless cameras.
Along with the Zenit 11, at the same time I bought an M42 lens reverse ring. One side is the M42 thread that screws into the camera. On the other side is a 49mm filter thread that fits most (that I’ve seen) 50mm M42 lenses, including my Pentacon and the Cosina. Reversing the lens is ideal for macro photography, and I’ve tested it out and the macro effect works nicely with both. A reversed 50mm lens should give a roughly life-size image on the film.
This post was supposed to be an introduction and a test of the Zenit 11, but the weather has decided not to cooperate … again. So, instead I hope this short post will serve as an indication of my direction and intentions for the CCCP. when the weather improves, I’ll be out with a roll of film, Practising with the Zenit 11 and accessories.
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