FED (manufacturer)

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FED Stereo

The FED Labor Commune ( FED ; Russian Trudkommuna imeni F. E. Dzerzhinskovo ) is a Ukrainian camera factory in Kharkiv named after Felix Dzerzhinsky (1877–1926), the founder of the Soviet secret service Cheka .

Models

FED-2. Rare example from the first releases - camera with a rectangular rangefinder window
  • FED 1 (Fedka) (1934–1955)
  • FED S (1938-1941)
  • FED V (from 1938)
  • FED 2 (1955-1970)
  • ZARYA (1958-1959)
  • FED 3 (1961-1980)
  • FED 4 (1964-1976)
  • FED 5 (1977-1990)

Stereo cameras (1988–1996)

  • FED Stereo
  • FED Stereo M
  • FED BOY Stereo

Current models on the market:

  • FED 5B
  • FED 5C

History and Development

FED was founded in 1927 by the educator Anton Makarenko . In the commune, around 150 orphans were raised according to the Marxist system of polytechnical education. They worked two four-hour shifts; one consisted of intellectual instruction, the other physical labor. Furniture and other goods were initially manufactured for personal use; from 1929 the FED was autonomous, from 1930 the training standard was raised to Abitur level and a factory was set up.

In this factory, FED initially only produced drilling machines and, from mid-1932, Leica copies; These were initially replicas of the Leica I (1932–1933) presented in 1925 and the Leica II (1934 to the 1950s). In 1934 around 4,000 of the so-called Fedkas were made; All in all, the production of the Soviet replicas clearly exceeds what Leica has produced in the entire history of the company. In 1934, two other factories, the WOOMP experimental factory ( VOOMP Opytny Sawod ) and the Geodesija Sawod in Moscow, began producing Leica replicas.

From 1938 four interchangeable lenses were manufactured using the Elmar design; The development of a replica of the Leica IIIa began in 1937 , but only around 40 prototypes of this FED-B were made. Instead, an independent development was accelerated: the 1938 presented FED-S already had a shortest shutter speed of 1/1000 second and a lens with a luminous intensity of 1: 2.0.

In 1939 the FED factory was renamed FE Dzerzhinsky Kombinat and the production of the 100,000th Fedka was celebrated; Before the outbreak of war, around 500,000 cameras had been manufactured in the Soviet Union.

After the end of the war, production of the pre-war models was resumed; the first innovation was the FED-2 with self-timer , exchangeable rear panel and various other improvements introduced in 1955 .

A well-known Leica and Fedka photographer was Alexander Michailowitsch Rodchenko (1891–1956).

literature

  • Jean Loup Princelle, Valia Ouvrier: The Authentic Guide to Russian and Soviet Cameras: Made in USSR: 200 Soviet Cameras . Hove Photo Books, 1996, ISBN 1-874031-63-0
  • Yrrah Kesardnov: Russian cameras 1930–1990, a reference work . Self published in 1993
  • Yuri Ryshkov's: Russian and Soviet cameras (1840–1991)
  • D. Bunimovitch: Russian cameras . Moscow 1950
  • FED: History of a factory . Kharkov 1987

Web links

Commons : FED (manufacturer)  - collection of images, videos and audio files