KMZ Zenit-3M

By 1962 Krasnogorsk had a reflex in full production that you could load without swearing. The Zenit-3M took over from the short-lived Kristall, and KMZ went on to make 781,678 of them by 1970. No M39 Zenit is more common. The big change is at the back. Loading a Zenit-3 meant feeding film in through the bottom plate, rangefinder style. On the 3M a hinged door swings open, the cassette drops in, and you shut it like any later SLR.

Winding and firing happen at the same spot on the top plate, because the shutter release sits in the hub of the advance lever. Press it and the finder goes black. It stays black, since the mirror resets only when you advance the film. After a week you wind on by reflex the moment the shutter closes; the alternative is staring into darkness while the next picture walks past you.

Behind the mirror runs a cloth focal-plane shutter, 1/30 to 1/500 plus B, with X and M flash sync at 1/30. A mirror that flips up and stays there makes its slap felt, and KMZ plainly knew it. Set the self-timer and the mirror lifts about half a second before the shutter fires, so the vibration has time to die away. On a tripod at the slower speeds, that is the way to fire it. The mount is the M39 Zenit thread. It shares the 39mm thread with Zorki lenses, but its 45.2mm flange distance is far longer than the rangefinder's, so the two families do not interchange.

Exports carried the names Zenith-3, Revueflex, Global and Kalimar SLR 100, so the same camera turns up in the West under several names. One travelled further than most: Che Guevara had a Zenit-3M with him in Bolivia. Nothing in it needs a battery, which counts for a lot when the nearest camera shop is a long way behind you.

Its real weakness is what KMZ left off. There is no meter at all. Pair a 1/500 ceiling with ISO 400 film on a bright beach and you are stopping right down or reaching for a slower stock. M39 Zenit glass is also a smaller pool than the M42 lenses that came later. Anyone shopping for one ends up weighing it against the Zenit-E, which adds a selenium meter, a mirror that comes back on its own and, on most examples, the M42 thread. The 3M answers with simplicity and early sixties charm, and with so many made, examples are not hard to find.

With no cell on board, a spot reading from the Zone Light Meter app is how exposure gets placed: read the shadows, set speed and aperture by hand, then focus on the ground glass and shoot. That routine slows you down in a useful way, and by the time the shutter fires you have actually thought about the frame. As an object it is the most produced M39 Zenit and the last of them before the M42 bodies took over, and unlike plenty of collectables it still earns its film.