Half a year ago I did a small article in Portuguese about my Zenit 12xp camera. It ended up as being one of my most popular articles so I decided to translate it to English.
The Zenit 12XP is a soviet built SLR from the 80s, being the export version of the Zenit 12.
Because I already owned several M42 lens that were used in my DSLR, I started looking for a camera that used this very same system and I managed to find one online available for trade.
It arrived in excelente conditions, with the exception of a very common flaw: a vertical line in the viewfinder. Apparently the reflective coating has a tendency to become detached.
Finding batteries wasn’t the easiest thing I ever did as it uses two LR43 batteries. These are thinner, less common versions of their LR44 brothers. Fortunately I managed to find some at a nearby Chinese store.
This is a fully mechanical camera with a TTL CdS light meter. The meter works simply through two LED that we can see in the viewfinder, if the upper led is on it’s too bright, if the lower led is on, it’s too dark. The film sensitivity scale is measured in GOST, a soviet scale that’s close to the ASA/ISO, but its not quite there. From my experience, this doesn’t cause too much trouble.
The camera does support automatic M42 lens so light metering is done by pressing the shutter button half way, which closes the diaphragm to the set opening.
This camera does have a timer but its a bit tricky to use. One must press the trigger button half way, turn it right in order to keep the diaphragm already closed, arm the timer with a frontal lever and then we can start the timer by pressing the frontal button.
Unfortunately I made the mistake of locking the button halfway to prevent accidental shooting. The result was that the camera was constantly metering and draining the batteries.
It’s a somewhat limited model as it doesn’t allow us to shoot as speeds faster than 1/500s or slower than 1/30s but due to my personal stock of M42 lens it ended up as one of my most used cameras.
So it was up to this old Krasnogorskiy Mekhanicheskiy Zavod to do the honors and show its worth.
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