003 - Zorki 4K and Jupiter 8 50mm F2 Review

The Zorki 4K / Zorki 4 is a manual, purely mechanical rangefinder film camera that was made in the former Soviet Union. My example was made in the KMZ factory in Krasnogorsk, Russia. It was introduced in 1956 to replace the earlier Soviet-made Leica copy rangefinders created by Zorki and FED.

The 4K was arguably the most advanced version of the Soviet rangefinder, with a high shutter speed for the time of 1/1000s, selectable flash sync, self timer and optical diopter for the view/rangefinder.

Despite these more contemporary creature comforts, it still had some glaring issues.

These include, but are not limited to:

• Build quality inconsistencies
• Rangefinder misalignment
• Loose diopter adjustments
• Mechanical fragility
• Manual reset frame counter
• Non-existent framelines
• Poor rangefinder patch contrast
• Overall user complexity

Before going into detail about those issues, I should preface them with this: if you are careful and respect the camera for what it is, a vintage tool with quirks, it will last and capture amazing photos.

Mechanical fragility

The Zorki 4K, like cameras from closer to the 1930s, requires you to advance the film and cock the shutter before changing the shutter speed. This is due to the setting pin being very fragile and easily snapped if this operation is done in the incorrect order.

Personally this has never been an issue for me, as it's something I've been very conscious of. But with how easy this would be to do, it's something to be extra careful with.

Overall complexity

The 4K isn't an inherently difficult camera to use, but it has its fair share of quirks.

The built-in viewfinder is a combined rangefinder and viewfinder like that of a more contemporary camera, but the issue is the lack of framelines. It is calibrated to a standard 50mm field of view, but without framelines or any sort of parallax correction it makes the camera difficult to compose images with reliably.

In addition to the incoherent viewfinder, the rewind procedure is convoluted and tedious. It requires the user to press down the shutter button surround and rotate it clockwise. Then you can lift the rewind knob and painstakingly rewind the film back into the canister. One advantage to this stiff rewinding is that you can almost always feel the end of the roll come off the take-up spool, meaning if you develop your own film and like to leave the leader out for easy loading, you can do that with this camera.

Enough of the bad

I love my Zorki 4K. It is a solid camera with the feeling of an Accrington brick. It's weighty, reassuring and has a great shutter sound for a cloth curtain shutter. In general, this camera makes me want to use it because of how good it feels, not to mention its capability as a near-pocketable camera for taking out on the street.

The lens - Jupiter 8 50mm F2 rangefinder

The standard lens for the 4K, and a number of other Soviet rangefinders from the time, is the Jupiter 8 50mm F2. My copy was also made in the KMZ factory and is an absolute beaut. It has great contrast, good sharpness, good feel and accurate rangefinder coupling, something you can't expect to be a given with later Soviet lenses.

These lenses came in one of two mounts: L39 / LTM, Leica Thread Mount, or the Nikon / Contax RF mount. My understanding is that the Jupiter lenses are the Contax variant of the Contax / Nikon RF mount. This means they can be used on the Kiev 4 rangefinder but will have focusing issues on Nikon rangefinders.

My example is in LTM mount. This means I can use the lens on the Zorki as intended, or adapt it to my Leica M6 via an inexpensive adapter, giving me the characteristic look on a much more refined camera.

To summarise

If you have been considering this camera, go and buy it. It's a hardy-feeling, if not always hardy in practice, piece of equipment with enough features for most amateur and pro photographers alike. It's not going to be your number one camera. It's not going to be your everyday carry. It's not going to suit a wedding photographer or a sports photographer, but it's damn fun for what it is.