FED

The FED are popular rangefinder cameras manufactured at the Felix Edmundovitch Djerzinski factory in Soviet Russia, between 1934 until around 1984. The ’FED' name tag was coined after Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, who established the Cheka ñ one of the Soviet state security organizations. The first FED cameras were actually copies of the famous German ’Leica’ camera. By 1934, the factory started mass production of the Leica II. During the same year, the factory was brought under the control of NKVD. The FED factory was destroyed in 1941 by German invaders and only went into full scale production around 1950.

By 1955, FED introduced the FED 2 camera that incorporated a rangefinder along with the viewfinder. The FED-3 saw the introduction of slow shutter speeds while in the next version FED-3 (b), the film advance was replaced from a thumbwheel to a more regular lever. The FED 4 came with a non-coupled Selenium Exposure Meter and with the FED 5, the rangefinder family was finally discontinued. The FED 5 was actually aimed at replacing the older FED-3 and FED-4 models and was equipped with an Industar I-61L/D lens. In all, three versions of the FED-5 were produced. The FED-5 and FED-5C came with an exposure meter whereas the FED-5B rangefinder camera had no meter and was a more affordable version.