My ama yesterday went well so I'm happy to talk about more stuff that I know about. While I can talk a decent amount about digital photography most of my experience is with film stuff. I have grown up in the digital era so I may not be as experienced as some of you older folks. I own a few soviet cameras, a chinese one and a couple old cannons. I've used a bit more than that so I should be able to answer a decent amount of your questions.

    • blobjim [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Well for one they view the world using a Marxist-Leninist lens.

    • VivaZapata [he/him]B
      ·
      4 years ago

      In a lot of ways not as much as you'd expect. Some of the best designs including my favorite the Zorki 4k are copied from some western ones. Not to say that they didn't inovate at all because that's not at all true. Normally they would start off with a model that is an exact copy of a western camera (for instance some leicas had their machinery liberated from Nazi Germany as reperations) and then would change to be their own thing. Soviet cameras as far as I've used them are rugged and at least today are super affordable compared to similar cameras from the same time period.