INTRODUCTION

The Zorki 1a is a 35mm film rangefinder camera made in Ukraine between 1949 and 1956. It is a copy of the German Leica IIIa from the 30s.

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PERSONAL NOTES

Over the years, I had many Leica. All of them were great. I also had many russian or ukrainian copies. Even if these copies look the same, let me tell you that they are not at all!

I probably had a dozen Russian or Ukrainian cameras. Each of them developped all sorts of issues, then they -all- died.

On the other hand, a real Leica IIIa from 1935 is still working great today. If you take account for reliability, a real Leica IIIa is not expensive at all, even if it's very old, it will work for many years.

CONCLUSION

Forget about russian copies of Leica, they are so unreliable that you will end up paying more than the real thing on the long run, get a real Leica IIIa instead.

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