GOMZ/LOMO Voskhod camera

Last week I wrote about the Sokol camera, which is the first Soviet model I appreciated and really liked. So today I picked up a senior sister, the LOMO Voskhod. The Voskhod is fifteen years older than the Sokol, and a far cry from the run-of-the-mill, mass-produced, lacklustre, and boring Soviet cameras. The maker, GOMZ/VOOMP/LOMO of St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad/St. Petersburg in Russia/USSR/Russia may require a Gantt chart to place it at a given point in time, but to the casual observer it suffices to know that it had been making optical equipment from 1914 to the mid 1990s, when it had dropped film camera making in a futile try to enter the digital age. The company still makes military, scientific and medical equipment, while the cult LOMO camera production was taken over by the Lomography group in Austria.

Other Soviet and East German camera makers, such as FED, KMZ, Arsenal, and Pentacon, were busy replicating the successful German models, after complete plants were moved from Germany, lock, stock, and barrel, along with the working hands and brains, as reparations after the Great Patriotic War. GOMZ/LOMO took somewhat a different path. On the one hand, they made the endless entry-level Smena models and the long-lasting Lubitel line; on the other hand, they made the VOOMP, Sport and Leningrad, and the Sputnik and Sokol in between. A Leningrad derivative was also honoured to be used in space.

I set my sights on the Voskhod in 2020 when I did the Yashica Rapide and the Taron Chic, both 1961 models, and hunted one down last year, paying twice its going rate, as always when I look for a specific camera.

The camera is different. While the other two are half-frame, here it is a full 35mm format. Some reviewers praise its beauty and style; I do hold back. It is innovative and far removed from other Soviet cameras; it has the chic of a brick, nary a curve. All the designers added is a slant at the lens side.   Further, the controls are scattered all over, disobeying any convention, meaning a learning curve and a need to consult the manual. Having said that, it is not an eyesore, just different.

As a side note, in a kind of Soviet humour, the post-war T-55 heavy battle tank family featured a perfectly half-round turret, and here they forgo it. They made about 100,000 tanks, at a budget os some 50 billion USD, so much for the workers’ paradise prominence of consumer goods.

The Voskhod – Russian for Ascent, a name that it had shared with the Soviet multi-person space mission and spacewalk, first on both sides of the curtain.  It was presented at the seam between GOMZ and LOMO, so some models are named either way. As with most other Soviet cameras, the logo and settings were offered in Latin or Cyrillic letters, with the model name looking like Bochod, all that if you are able to decipher the name out of that logo where it declines into the sharp end of a triangle, all that in two orientations, perhaps to symbolize the orientations the camera can do. As any lowly camera could be used in two orientations, it looks like a bad design element, but who am I to decide.

The camera target market is unclear. It is too complex and expensive for a Smena user, and it has no quality halo or technical capability for a pro or high-end user. Perhaps this is why its five-year production run yielded just under 60,000 units, far from the millions made of the popular Soviet models.

There was only one model, but it did have slight changes; see Soviet Cams for details.

The camera body is a mix of aluminum and steel, which seems to be a pattern by makers there. As such, it is heavier than what is expected of a compact 35mm viewfinder, 700gr vs a class average of 480gr – 25oz vs. 17oz. Little thought went into the human interface, so it does not sit naturally in hand. Further, as mentioned above, the controls are haphazardly scattered, so you have to hunt for what and where.

• The top, from left, carries a manually reset, declining frame counter, adjusted by what you expect to be the trigger. Press the serrated pin head and turn. On the other side is a folding pull-out crank handle, which is overkill, but I believe that they chose this style to keep the top as clean and plain, kind of Wera. A flat screwhead sits next to it; it seems to adjust something. Suggestions are welcome.
• The back has an uncharacteristically large, bright and clear viewer, with a well-defined parallax frame.  The designers had all the good intentions, but the assembly line installed it off-square, at least on my camera.
• A mighty white needle hovers within the viewer, over three voids at the bottom of the frame. The right denotes underexposure, the middle correct and the left overexposure. I was surprised to find that the meter worked, as they naturally die after a few decades, and here it is over 60 years old and still going strong. Maybe I should rethink my stark opinion about the Soviet camera industry. Well done there.
• At the back’s bottom is a serrated thumb wheel that sets the film speed, which affects the meter reading and the EV combination of the shutter and lens. Nearby, a bump serves no apparent purpose other than to balance the look.
• The bottom has a solid, rooted disk that holds the mounting thread, balanced by two pinheads to keep the camera stable. Between them are the film speed display windows: one in the German/European DIN, and the other in the Russian GOST. The GOST, short for the Soviet Standard Institute, values for photography were introduced in 1951 and abandoned in the late 1980s in favour of the ASA and DIN. It closely followed the American ASA, at about 90% of the respective values. See table below.
• The hinged back opens via a sliding bolt at the side’s bottom, and shows an immaculately finished film bays and track. A pressure plate is mounted in the back. A flat screw head is under the viewer; again, it should be for some adjustment.
• The strap’s lugs are on the side, so the camera would hang vertically; I think it was done that way for aesthetics.
• The front is busy.
  • Note that the camera is finely balanced on its base, so well balanced that, with the lens set all the way out, it falls on its nose.
  • The questionable square, diminishing logo is posted by the viewer window. The same design motif is used for the Latin and Cyrillic lettering.
  • The Selenium meter lens is under the viewer, with a rectangular frame below it that looks like an afterthought or a finger rest.
  • A chromed breastplate carries the lens assembly, and a neatly arranged trigger, sync port and a crude film-type memo. Markings are immaterial today, as all film types it relates to are redundant.
  • The trigger position is questionable, too close to the lens base, and is not natural for either landscape or portrait orientation.
  • Closest to the body. At 1 o’clock is a large, leaf-shaped thumb lever, pushed upwards; it cocks the shutter and winds the film. A similar concept appeared on some early German and Japanese cameras, such as the Konica III, Adox 300, or Tenax II, but it didn’t gain many followers. As with other components here, the cocking direction is counterintuitive.
  • Next is a black ring that controls the aperture. It is set by a finger tab that moves between four and seven o’clock. The markings are hidden on the side/bottom and are difficult to read. Set the value against a red diamond mark at three o’clock on the front-facing ring in front of it.
  • Next, a serrated dial sets the shutter speed, which is locked together with the aperture ring. Set the speed against the same diamond.
  • To unlock the dials, press the tab at 11 o’clock and turn the serrated dial. This means that once the dials are locked together, a change in one compensates for the other, keeping EV constant. It also means you need an external light meter and some knowledge to set the correct combination, or to estimate the optimal values, so the fixed-EV idea is redundant.
  • At the front end is the focus-setting dial, having an exceptionally long travel. Along with the distance markings in meters are cute icons representing close-up, group, and landscape distances.

For collectors, I highly recommend this camera. Relatively few were made, and the quality is well above the run-of-the-mill Soviet cameras. From what I’ve read, most are available in good mechanical and cosmetic condition, same as my camera. The Voskhod is a sterling display of Soviet industrial ability, but it also fails in human engineering. They are offered for sale at random, with asking prices all over the map. A decent one could be had for just over USD 100, a value which will only appreciate.

GOST/ASA/Din comparison table

Camera passport