KMZ Zenit-122K

Offer a Pentax 50mm up to the front of this Zenit, turn it a short way, and it clicks home. That bayonet is the reason to own a Zenit-122K. Sovietcams is blunt on the point: apart from the Pentax K mount, it is a Zenit-122. Krasnogorsk kept the cloth shutter and the three LEDs in the finder and redesigned only the front of the camera. Once the M42 thread was gone, this Zenit could take Pentax glass and the long list of third-party K lenses, mounted with a quick twist instead of several turns of thread.

The English manual covers the change in numbers. It gives a 45.5mm flange distance and lists the MC Helios-44K-4 58mm f/2 as the standard lens. That Helios is the familiar 58mm design moved onto a bayonet, so you still get the busy, swirling backgrounds people buy Helios lenses for, and it will also go on any other K-mount body you own. The manual adds that M42 lenses fit through an adapter, but without the automatic diaphragm. So you focus wide open, close the aperture ring by hand for the exposure, then remember to open it again before you frame the next shot. I find that tedious after half a roll. Buy the K body for K glass and leave the screw-mount lenses on a screw-mount Zenit.

Under the new mount it handles like any later Zenit. The shutter is mechanical and cloth, running from 1/30 to 1/500 plus B, and it needs no battery, so a flat cell never stops you shooting. Metering goes through the lens with the lens stopped down: close to taking aperture and watch the LEDs, one for under, one for about right, one for over. Stopping down darkens the finder, and at f/11 indoors the three lights are nearly all you can make out. They still read faster than the needle on a Zenit-TTL, and the meter reads through the lens, which the external selenium cell on the Zenit-E never could.

Bright days are where it runs short. Load ISO 400 film, walk into full sun, and you are at 1/500 and f/16 with nowhere faster to go, so a wide-aperture portrait outdoors means slower film or an ND filter. Flash syncs only at 1/30, which makes daylight fill awkward. Most of these bodies have also spent years in a drawer, so check the LEDs against a known reading before you trust them; a drifted or dead meter is common. If yours is off, take an incident reading with the Zone Light Meter app and set speed and aperture by hand. The mechanical shutter keeps working whether the meter does or not.

KMZ also made a Moskva 850 edition for the city's 850th anniversary in 1997. Collectors look for that badge, but the ordinary black body is the one to shoot. Next to a K1000 it feels rougher, with a heavier wind and a noisier mirror, and I would not pretend otherwise. Its appeal is narrower than that. If you already have a bag of K lenses and want a Helios on a bayonet, this is the Zenit to get, and since the shutter is entirely mechanical, a beginner can learn exposure on it without the meter or a battery doing the thinking.