Maxim wrote: Thank you, Marc - that's interesting! I didn't know about this fact before I have a Russian portrait lens, Tair-11A with 004548 serial number.

Support the Ornano film chemicals company and help them survive! I have myself a few Russians beginning with zero numbers and in fact I was wondering how could that be possible for a lens bearing the writing 'Made in USSR' to have a serial number implying a build in the year 2000! This is an EXCELLENTLY INFORMATIVE contribution!!!!! I always look for the lenses with pre-production serial numbers because there’s that chance that they might be better than those of mass-production lines. Whether there is really any difference between which pre-production model is the better has yet to be tested. A great many members, with multiple copies of the helios 44-2, have invariably found the best to be the one with the 0xxxxx serial number. They are generally considered higher quality optics due to the fact that there is stricter quality control (which is disputed among Russian gear), they are produced in lower numbers with greater care, and they are not presented to the general public.

They are in fact all pre-production models. Alain Berry, a French ZCG group member gave these insights (translated by Martin Luerkens - another ZCG member):Ġ00xxxxxx factory test (study) models (prototypes etc) mod?les d'étudesĠ0xxxxxx preseries models reserved for members of the communist partyĪnd 'VIPs' (reservés aux membres du parti communist et hautĠxxxxxx reserved for factory syndicat leaders (réservés aux I didn't know if anyone knew what they really meant so these were our findings. As part of the yahoo zenit camera group we've come around to this topic more than once. Themoleman342 wrote: After reading through a great deal of the previous posts I noticed that there was a little discussion over the serial numbers of Russian lenses that start with 0, 00, or 000. Posted: Sat 2:05 am Post subject: A Word about Russian Serial Numbers

Rolleiflex planar serial numbers