Q&A: Where do you buy your Russian lenses? I have bought most of my lenses on eBay although I have also bought on various photography forums and some dedicated camera/lens equipment sites. My experience with eBay sellers out of xUSSR is mixed - about 50% of lenses I bough that way were basically paperweights. For cheaper lenses, I simply wrote that off and threw them away, while for more expensive copies I had to go through the hassle of returning the lenses back. I would recommend you to avoid any seller who does not accept returns - buying anything over $50 from such sellers poses way too much risk IMO. I've had a very bad experience with top35mm.com web site run by Alexander Semensky (eBay: semensky) - three lenses I ordered from him came completely broken one with jammed focusing ring, one with jammed aperture ring and the third lens in M42 instead of M39 mount. If you're purchasing an expensive Russian lens like Orion-15, dealing with a US based seller or better yet a company is much safer. fedka.com is one such company, run our of NYC. I've had a decent experience with them in the past and will most liley use them again. Unfortunately, fedka.com does not refresh its catalog very often and some lenses that you see on their web site might not be available or might have a different condition than what is advertised on the site. But at least you can return the item if you don't like it.

Prelude

If you are a rangefinder user, I am sure you have considered buying one of those dirt cheap Russian LTM lenses that have  flooded eBay. LTM lenses rose to the prominence in 30s and 40s with the ascention of Leica Screw Mount cameras. Numerous 'Leica Copies' have accelerated the adoption of the standard and a large number of manufacturers, including the fledging Japanese camera makers like Canon and Nikon began to manufacture LTM lenses. The birth of Russian LTM lenses can be traced to the 30s and the first FED camera, which utilized the M39 mount, as the Leica Screw Thread became to be known. After the defeat of Nazi Germany in WWII, Russians 'appropriated' the original optical equipment and designs from Carl Zeiss factory in Jena. Carl Zeiss know-how was one of the most prized posessions of the post-war era and helped accelerate innovation in the USSR's optical/photography industry, which was pretty much leveled with the ground over the five years of war. Most of the early Russian lens designs trace their roots to Carl Zeiss designs. The Jena factory continued its production under the Communist regime, but Russians also jump-started their own factories, most notably in Krasnogorsk (the KMZ factory) and later also expanded production to Arsenal Kiev, Litkarino, Lvov, Kharkov and Kazan factories. But KMZ remained the epicenter of the innovation and most original Russian designs were originated there.

However, while there are a lot of Russian lenses available on eBay, figuring out what is what is fairly hard - the Russian lens nomenklature is pretty confusing at times and often archaic. This guide tries to bring a little bit more clarity into this subject. We will focus only on Russian LTM lenses in this article - there is also a very wide range of Russian lenses available in Pentax M42/K mount as well as Contax mount, but these will be covered in a separate article at a later time. The main audience for this article should be a user, an active photographer if you will, rather than a collector. While some Russian lenses may bear collectible value, I am no expert in anything collectible and so am going to leave this topic to someone else. Hence the article will focus on lenses that are relatively easy to obtain on used markets and will be omitting all prototype and limited production lens. The article consists of three parts - the first part you are reading now will try to document all known Russian LTM lenses with same key statistics like rated resolution, pricing and availability. The second and third parts are oriented towards the practicioner who wants to see beyond the basic information and get a better feel about more subjective qualities of individual lenses. This is not a detailed review that you might be accustomed to if you're a regular here - if anyone decides to learn a bit more about a particular lens, he/she is advised to visit the full features lens reviews section.