The User's Review: Zenit (Zenith) - S 35mm SLR Camera, Made in 1956 as Shown by the First Two Digits in Its SN

My dad brought this camera when he was a graduate in Pushkin during later 1957 and 1961. My family and his friends used it until 1980s. It is of all metal, therefore, heavy and very durable.

This was the first camera that I used, and I used it until it stopped working. It's difficult to load the film since the body has an opening bottom. I had to set the shutter to 'B', kept the shutter curtains open, toke off the lens, and used my finger to press the film into the right position behind the shutter. Moreover, the metal cassette coming with the body must be used in order to avoid damaging the film. I do not know if these are the 'features' for this model or just be special for our copy.

It's a pain to load the camera, but it did leave us a lot of good memories on its pictures. What surprised me is that my dad still has the original box (in good shape) holding the camera after more than 50 years.

        

The User's Review: Zenit (Zenith) - E 35mm SLR Camera, Made in 1978 as shown by the First Two Digits in Its SN

In later 1980s, my mom crossed the border to have a one-day tour in USSR. At that time, there was no currency exchange and the visitors from China needed to buy Chinese goods before the tour and traded with the Russians in USSR. A Russian wanted to trade this camera for 1 or 2 shirts in my mom's hands, and my mom agreed. Therefore, later I got this camera.

I shot 1 or 2 rolls of film with this camera. Although it was not as good as my Yashica FX-3 brought to me by my dad, this Zenith-E was much better than my dad's Zenit-S produced in 1956.

The User's Review: Pentax ZX-5 (MZ-5) 35mm AF Film Camera With Panorama, Power Zoom and QD Back, Released in 1996

The User's Review: Ricoh KR-5SV 35 mm Film Camera

The Ricoh KR-5SV film camera is an all-mechanical camera, which means it can work with or without batteries. The batteries are only used to power up the light meter. Due to the Pentax K-mount design like many other Ricoh bodies, KR-5SV has uncountable options on lenses. Users can also manually adjust the ISO range from a low of 25 for still shots, and a high of 1600 for action shots. 

KR-5SV has a plastic shell with many plastic parts inside. A balance point between cost and durability should be in consideration by both the manufacture and a user.