History of krasnogorsk-3 camera

[Ivan Juric]

I just bought krasnogorsk-3 and while i'm waiting for it to arrive i started to search for some data about it.

 

To be quick here are the two main questions that i can't find any reliable answer to:

 

1. When did the production of k3 start and when did it end (- i guess with the collaps of ussr)?

2. Are there any movies that were shot with k3 (- i'll have to wait for a week or two until it arrives from Russia to Croatia, so i would like to watch some movie filmed with

k3)?

 

 

Sorry if there's already a post that answers this questions, i went through a lot of posts about k3 but i couldn't find anything.

 

 

[Joerg Polzfusz]

http://www.zenitcamera.com/catalog/moviecameraproduction.html

Contains a list with "soviet cameras produced per year", including your camera.

[Dom Jaeger]

According to Jurgen Lossau's pretty reliable catalogue in "Filmkameras" the K3 was manufactured from 1971-1976.

 

I doubt there are many notable credits, it's really more of a beginner's camera, the most commonly quoted factoid is that parts of Spike Lee's Get On The Bus were shot with one. This site devoted to the K3 mentions a few music videos as well:

http://www.k3camera.com/

 

Plenty of stuff of varying quality on youtube or vimeo, often camera tests.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

And here's a Russian manual:

http://www.zenitcamera.com/mans/krasnogorsk-3/krasnogorsk-3.html

[Dom Jaeger]

http://www.zenitcamera.com/catalog/moviecameraproduction.html

Contains a list with "soviet cameras produced per year", including your camera.

 

Interesting, according to that site K3s continued to be made up until 1993. Looking at Lossau's book again I notice his dates are for the bayonet mount version while the entry for the M-42 mount version is undated, so I guess those ones kept being made until then.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

There was also a "modernized" K3 (called "K3M" on some webpages).

K3: http://www.ussrphoto.com/wiki/default.asp?WikiCatID=61&ParentID=58&ContentID=538

K3M: http://www.ussrphoto.com/wiki/default.asp?WikiCatID=61&ParentID=58&ContentID=537 or http://www.filmvorfuehrer.de/topic/6771-krasnogorsk-k3m/

It looks like the K3M was produced since 1991. Hence it could be that the "K3M" replaced the "K3" in 1991 without being listed as "new camera" in that Soviet production list...

[Ivan Juric]

Thanks for all the info, wasn't expecting such a massive response. Interesting stuff about k-3m and k-4.