Here is a shot of my customized Zorki 1D (2C body shell, sporting a 20mm Vivitar f3.8 lens). The lens was built for a camera with an M42 (Pentax slr screw mount) but mates to the Zorki with a custom adapter that corrects the back focus. The Vivitar doesn't couple to the Zorki rangefinder but has such depth of field, particularly at small f stops, that everything from 1 meter or less to infinity is in focus anyway. Obviously, I need to come up with some sort of accessory viewfinder to approximate the 94-degree field of view. This is a set up that tends to get the attention of folks on the street.
This is my first custom "shooter". Take one Zorki 2C and set the innards aside for parts or whatever. Strip the vulcanite off the 2C body shell and recover it with genuine leather from a Tandy Leather Shop scraps bin. The new covering hides the holes for the 2C self-timer.
Pull the top and shutter off a Zorki 1D, and drop it into the 2C body shell. Add a Jupiter 12 35mm f2.8 lens. Now you've got a classy, compact camera with lugs for a neckstrap. The last step was to replace the shutter curtains and give the workings a good CLA. The leather covering entirly changes the character of the camera.
Zorki 1B/2C
This
is my second attempt to create a true Russian Leica. Again the body is
from a Zorki 2C. The running gear is from a Zorki 1B that had flash sync
installed before it left the Motherland. The lens is a Jupiter 8 and the
accent stripes were painted graphite gray instead of traditional black.
The 1B conversion is a little harder because of the
middle screw hole in the back of the camera top (the 2C body doesn't have
a place for that screw. Also the 1B shutter crate is made from lighter
material than the later cast aluminum crates. Over the years it had apparently
distorted slightly and it took some work to get all the screw holes to
line up. Well worth the effort, however.
This is a FED 3A with a 28mm M42 thre This is a FED 3A with a 28mm M42 thread mount Soligor lens. The 42mm threads mate to the M39 body via a special adapter that also puts the lens at the appropriate distance from the film plane. The camera rangefinder doesn't work with this setup so the lens needs to be a wide angle that can be stopped down to provide lots of depth of field with zone focusing. The finder shown is actually for a 35mm lens but by including the area outside the 35mm frame I can get a general idea of what will be included in the picture. The Soligor is a great performer with nice contrast