For the second half of my walk on the last day of February, I switched to my FED 2 that I had loaded with Ilford's finest HP5+ 400. My lens of choice to use on my FED 2 is the Jupiter 8 50mm f/2 and this Soviet era camera and lens were heavily influenced by Leica designs. The FED factory in Kharkiv, Ukraine was destroyed during WW2 and was quickly rebuilt after the war and back into production by 1950, giving employment to men and women demobbed after the war ended.
The FED 2 was made between 1955 and 1970, I believe mine is a FED 2d and had been serviced at some point before it came to me. This is the important thing to remember if you decide to give a former Soviet Union camera a try. There are vendors out there who will sell you a fully serviced camera that will give you years of reliable use for a reasonable price.
You can get lucky on ebay, as I did, but it really is a gauntlet that will bite you in your wallet all too easily. Stephen Dowling wrote an excellent guide to buying Soviet cameras on Kosmo Foto you can visit using the link below. It's well worth doing research for any camera, but for the budding Soviet camera owner it really is a necessity. Caveat Emptor, etc.
Over winter there has been a lot of work been done to improve the paths and give more people access to the local countryside and I was really pleased to find the second half of my walk has changed from being on a muddy, ancient trackway to a smooth, asphalt path. I mentioned the improvement to the pathways last week, but the extent of those improvements is much longer than I have been used to thus far. Almost all the second half of my walk was on the new path and it's good to see my taxes being spent to improve access for everyone. If you're riding a bicycle, pushing a pram or a disabled person riding an electric buggy, the new and improved paths are well worth using.
I was really enjoying my walk, taking photographs of the route and the gnarly trees that I found interesting along the way. I was having so much fun I wasted a few frames by forgetting to remove my lens cap. This is the bad thing about using a rangefinder. They don't have a through the lens viewfinder, nor the protection of a mirror between the lens and shutter, so I have to concentrate more than I do when using one of my basic viewfinder cameras or an SLR.
Daft me forgot and had to retrace steps to retake a few shots that I got excited about. It happens to the best of us, from total novices, enthusiasts with a few years experience and even to the odd professional. I do have a great reason for putting the lens cap back on. A common problem with Soviet rangefinders is pinholes in the shutter curtains. This is caused by sunlight being magnified by the lens and burning through the cloth curtain.
The aperture does not close fully after each time you release the shutter. With it being a really sunny afternoon, I was being cautious and put the lens cap back after taking a photo, but let it slip my mind a time or two. It's a daft mistake to make and I'm owning it. We shall never speak of it again. Well, until next time I do it, lol. I saved my last few shots for the duck pond in the hope the surface would be like a mirror, and it was. With my last shots done, I made my way home for a well earned brewski.
I developed my roll of HP5+ 400 in Kodak HC-110 1+31 dilution B for 5 minutes at 20 celcius and soon had it hanging to dry in my bathroom. I had continued to meter with my Gossen Trisix and I managed to get well exposed photos on this roll of HP5. My day without batteries was, and always will be very therapeutic.
I digitised it with my Nikon D700 and Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens mounted on my K&F Concept tripod. My film was held in my Valoi 35mm film holder mounted on my Pixl-Latr and lit using my A5 sized led light pad. I processed the RAW files with Affinity Photo 2.
I'm quite happy with my effort as it's been a while since I used my FED 2. Ukraine has a great history of building decent quality Soviet era rangefinder cameras derived from Leica and Contax. The first editions are direct copies, but there's always someone with an idea for an improvement.
Even today, with no cameras being manufactured in Ukraine, there are still trained technicians and engineers who know these cameras literally inside out. They tweak and refine each camera that comes to them and there's a lot more good quality Soviet era cameras thanks to their dedication to their craft.
My photos turned out well thanks to the sunshine and I had a lot of fun using my FED 2 again. It wont be long before I use it again as Papa Shitty Cams has organised another #CrappyCommieCameraParty starting on June 1st and running through the summer. if you fancy joining in, all you need is a Soviet era camera from any of the former Soviet Union nations, plus East Germany and China. We are posting our photos, the good, the bad and the ugly, on Bluesky. We might even dance like Cossacks.
Here's a few of my favourites from my roll of Ilford HP5 shot with my FED 2 and Jupiter 8 50mm f/2 lens on the last sunny afternoon in February 2025. As always, I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.
Kosmo Foto Guide To Buying Soviet Cameras
Fed2 - Jupiter 8 - Ilford HP5
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