Smena 4, soviet bakelite camera

The Smena 4 is a Soviet bakelite camera of the 50s. It is a simple point and shoot camera with manual controls.

The camera has an Industar-22 40mm lens that is sharp but with a slow maximum aperture of f/4.5 The shutter sppeds range from 1/250 to 1/10 plus B. Before exposure is made the shutter must be cocked by a lever then the taking button must be pressed and then advance the film. The camera allows for multiple exposures, if the film is not advanced.
BEWARE! to advance one frame you must wind the advance lever one and a half times until some resistance is felt!

 

The Smena - 4 needed 2 special 35mm canisters, the take up canister stores the film and there was not need to rewind the film back to the unexposed film canister. That means there is no rewind button, in its place there is a cold shoe to connect a flash via a cable to the shutter.

To use the camera we must take a spool from the interior of used film canister and place it in the take up position. You may need to trim the edges a little. The position fo the spool is shown in the following photo.

since there is no rewind button and the film is unprotected you must open the camera in the dark and put the exposed film back to its canister.

Here are some samples I took with the Smena 4

With the first film I only advanced the film with one stroke of the lever so I got double exposed pictures, mainly overexposed and washed out. These three are the only visible ones:

 

I then put another film in and advanced it properly

The manual settings allow for some fun
I took 3 exposures here without advancing the film, stopping down by 2 stops for each exposure. The result was a proper exposure with the moving objects underexposed and recorded as ghosts.

 For this pano I advanced only half frame, with only one stroke of the advanced lever. I got two frames with double exposures and then I stitched them manualy.

Overall the pictures came out sharp but a little overexposed, but that was my fault...