Of course, when it comes to appearance and functionality, you should pay close attention to the listing and ask for any additional info and photos before purchasing. However, the sellers I’ve bought from were good about communicating the delivery times, packaging, and having their product match its description and photos. Posting items from Russia can take months to deliver - my longest wait was four months. So the premium you’d be paying can only be justified by shipping times and whatever guarantees and refund policies the retailer may be offering. There is no way those US and Japanese stores aren’t sourcing Industar-10s from the former Soviet republic, most likely Ukraine, as it’s the geographic location of the FED factory. US and Japanese sellers, as of this writing, sell them for $100 + $25 shipping. You can even find batches of 10 sold at just over $100.

Today, Russian, Ukrainian, and former USSR sellers can be found shipping them anywhere for $50 - delivery price included. The price oddly depends on the country your seller is located in. This is why ruining one due to a shoddy repair job is an affordable lesson - $50 - if this is 2022 and you’ve had some experience buying on eBay. Industar 10s are cheap and plentiful in supply on eBay. In fact, this lens is an excellent starting point if you’d like to learn how to perform CLA on your lenses. Industar-10’s serviceability is fantastic. I soaked the glass in hydrogen peroxide for five minutes and then gently washed it with soapy water, followed by a careful wipe with a lens cloth. Provided that you organize your tools and parts well and have a good working surface, taking Industar-10 apart and putting back together is a five-minute job. There are only three groups that are all easy to access with the right tools. It took me an entire roll of film to get used to this lens. This makes focusing near infinity difficult. The lens locks in the infinity position, out of which it needs to be pushed slightly harder to come out. To change its aperture, you have to push a tiny tab next to the lens, and the focus adjustment isn’t easy to comprehend either. Industar-10’s ergonomics, however, aren’t ideal. Nothing awful and practically unnoticeable, but it was there.

Although I could imagine Leica’s original design would feel and look even better, it can’t be that much of a difference.ĭespite its great appearance, I found a small flaw in my lens after getting the film back from the lab. Hefty yet intricate in design, compact with reasonable tolerances. It felt exactly as it looked in a picture: fantastic. Its rings turned smoothly, and nothing seemed out of place. Industar-10 build quality, handling, and ergonomics. Based on Carl Zeiß’s designs, like many other Soviet lenses, Industar-10 uses the Tessar system that some say may perform as well as Elmar - but only if it’s properly “adjusted.” This refers to the lens’ good design being held back by poor build quality control. It’s at the core of nearly sixty Soviet-made lenses’ optical design.ĭespite its appearance (and mechanics) closely resembling the German Leica’s Elmar collapsable lens, its optics are something else. Industar is a Tessar-type lens design used by FED and other factories made cameras since the 1930s. He’s known for his involvement with the Soviet secret police and the children’s labour commune, which eventually transformed into the factory that made FED cameras. My 50mm 𝒇3.5 Industar-10 lens had ФЭД inscribed in Cyrillics, which is the same brand as the camera, FED. Collapsable, beautiful, with a distinctive brassing on the ring surrounding the glass bubble, a quality even the much more expensive Leica Elmars do not seem to have. The lens that my FED-2 rangefinder came with was the crown jewel of the entire package. However, when I saw a much older FED-2 for sale, I had to have it - it looked positively stunning - and it felt better in use also. Dad’s FED-5, despite being an important part of my family’s history, has bad ergonomics and isn’t as fun to shoot as some of my other cheap cameras. Soviet photographic equipment does not have a great reputation Russian lenses and cameras are usually sold at a fraction of the European or Japanese equivalents’ price. I generally gravitated towards (West) German and Japanese cameras, as most would, for their build and image quality. FED-2 with Industar-10 lens, a Soviet Leica copy.įED-2 was my second Russian-built camera, which I bought years after I started shooting film.

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