![KMZ photo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/KMZ_photo.jpg)
Krasnogorsky zavod (russian: Красногорский завод им. С. А. Зверева, , Krasnogorsk Works named after S. A. Zverev) is a Russian factory in
Krasnogorsk near
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
which specializes in
optical
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviole ...
technology. Part of
Shvabe Holding
Shvabe Holding (russian: Швабе) is a holding company within the Russian state-owned Rostec group responsible for development and production of high-tech optical-electronic systems both for military and civil purposes, manufacturing of optical ...
(
Rostec
Rostec ( rus, Ростех, p=, r=Rostekh), officially the State Corporation for Assistance to Development, Production and Export of Advanced Technology Industrial Product Rostec (russian: Государственная корпорация по ...
state corporation).
During the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
period it was called Krasnogorsk Mechanical Works (, ). The abbreviation KMZ () is still in common use.
Products
KMZ is known largely for its
photographic
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed i ...
and
movie
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
camera
A camera is an Optics, optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), ...
s of the
Zorki
Zorki (russian: Зоркий, meaning sharp-sighted) is the name of a series of 35mm rangefinder cameras manufactured in the Soviet Union between 1948 and 1978.
The Zorki was a product of the Krasnogorsk Mechanical Factory (KMZ), which also pr ...
,
Zenit
Zenit, meaning "zenith", may refer to:
Spaceflight and rocketry
* Zenit (rocket family), a Soviet family of space launch vehicles
* Zenit (satellite), a type of Soviet spy satellite
* Zenit sounding rocket, a Swiss rocket
Sports
* Zenit (sports ...
and
Krasnogorsk series, several million of which were produced. It also has a large military optics and mechanical engineering division.
Image:Zorki4.jpg, Zorki 4 rangefinder camera
A rangefinder camera is a camera fitted with a rangefinder, typically a split-image rangefinder: a range-finding focusing mechanism allowing the photographer to measure the subject distance and take photographs that are in sharp focus. Most var ...
Image:Zenit12.jpg, Zenit
Zenit, meaning "zenith", may refer to:
Spaceflight and rocketry
* Zenit (rocket family), a Soviet family of space launch vehicles
* Zenit (satellite), a type of Soviet spy satellite
* Zenit sounding rocket, a Swiss rocket
Sports
* Zenit (sports ...
12 SLR camera
A single-lens reflex camera (SLR) is a camera that typically uses a mirror and prism system (hence "reflex" from the mirror's reflection) that permits the photographer to view through the lens and see exactly what will be captured. With twin le ...
File:Kinokamera Krasnogorsk-2.jpg, Krasnogorsk-2
The Krasnogorsk-2 (ru. ''Красногорск-2'') is 16mm spring-wound film camera with a mirror shutter, produced by Krasnogorsky Zavod from 1966 to 1977. It was released in the same year as the Krasnogorsk-1.
Function
The film is moved by a ...
movie camera
A movie camera (also known as a film camera and cine-camera) is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either on an image sensor or onto film stock, in order to produce a moving image to project onto a movie s ...
Image:Krasnogorsk-3_camera.jpg, Krasnogorsk-3
The Krasnogorsk-3 (Красногорск-3) is a spring-wound 16mm mirror-reflex movie camera designed and manufactured in the USSR by KMZ. A total of 105,435 Krasnogorsk-3 cameras were produced between 1971 and 1993.Horizon
The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether i ...
202 panoramic camera
Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as ''wide format photography''. The term has also been applied to ...
Image:%D0%A4%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B0%D0%BF%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82_%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B2%D0%B0-2.jpg, Moskva 2 camera
History
Founding and post-war years
After the
German invasion German invasion may refer to:
Pre-1900s
* German invasion of Hungary (1063)
World War I
* German invasion of Belgium (1914)
* German invasion of Luxembourg (1914)
World War II
* Invasion of Poland
* German invasion of Belgium (1940)
* G ...
of the Soviet Union in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
had acute need for precision optical instruments. The existing factories were either inaccessible, such as
LOMO
LOMO (russian: Ленинградское Oптико-Mеханическое Oбъединение, Leningradskoye Optiko-Mekhanicheskoye Obyedinenie, Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association) is a manufacturer of medical and motion-picture lens ...
in
besieged
Besieged may refer to:
* the state of being under siege
* ''Besieged'' (film), a 1998 film by Bernardo Bertolucci
{{disambiguation ...
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, or overloaded with demand, such as
FED which had just been
evacuated from
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.[Berdsk
Berdsk (russian: Бердск) is a town in Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia. A suburb of Novosibirsk, it is on the Berd River. In the 2010 Russian census, its population was
Geography
Berdsk is on the Berd River. Open land is south of the town and a ...]
. The KMZ factory was set up in 1942 near Moscow, which by then was no longer in immediate danger from German troops, on the site of a recently evacuated mechanical plant. Initially the company took over production of
scopes and
binoculars
Binoculars or field glasses are two refracting telescopes mounted side-by-side and aligned to point in the same direction, allowing the viewer to use both eyes (binocular vision) when viewing distant objects. Most binoculars are sized to be held ...
as well as
reconnaissance
In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities.
Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmisher ...
cameras.
After the end of the war, KMZ began producing photographic lenses in 1945 to the specifications of the
Carl Zeiss
Carl Zeiss (; 11 September 1816 – 3 December 1888) was a German scientific instrument maker, optician and businessman. In 1846 he founded his workshop, which is still in business as Carl Zeiss AG. Zeiss gathered a group of gifted practica ...
corporation, whose factory in
Jena
Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a popu ...
had been overrun by the Red Army and largely carted off as
war reparations
War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other. They are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war.
History
Making one party pay a war indemnity is a common practice with a long history.
R ...
.
1950s and 1960s: Years of creativity
The mid-1950s saw the beginning of a period of heightened
R&D activity at KMZ.
During this period, KMZ also produced the world's first subminiature SLR camera, the Narciss, an all-metal camera using 16mm unperforated film in special cassette, frame size 14x21mm. Narciss has a
focal plane shutter, speed B,1/2,1/5,1/10,1/25,1/50,1/125,1/250 and 1/500 sec.
1970s and 1980s: Catering to the domestic market
The pace of R&D for consumer products at KMZ substantially slowed down at the end of the 1960s. During the 1970s consumer production at KMZ shifted towards producing large numbers of individual, relatively simple models of the existing product lines.
Since the 1990s: Collapse and reconstruction
After the
collapse of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
, KMZ production was largely in disarray. Now, it is a group member of the multi-national Russian
Shvabe
Shvabe Holding (russian: Швабе) is a holding company within the Russian state-owned Rostec group responsible for development and production of high-tech optical-electronic systems both for military and civil purposes, manufacturing of optical ...
Holding.
Logo
Before 1949 the KMZ logo was a simple
dove prism
A Dove prism is a type of reflective prism which is used to invert an image. Dove prisms are shaped from a truncated right-angle prism. The Dove prism is named for its inventor, Heinrich Wilhelm Dove. Although the shape of this prism is similar t ...
, nicknamed "tomb" by factory workers. In 1949 the logo was changed to the present form, depicting a prism with a
refracted
In physics, refraction is the redirection of a wave as it passes from one medium to another. The redirection can be caused by the wave's change in speed or by a change in the medium. Refraction of light is the most commonly observed phenomeno ...
ray of light
''Ray of Light'' is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Madonna, released in early 1998 by Maverick Records. A stylistic and aesthetical departure from her previous work, ''Ray of Light'' is an electronica and techno-pop reco ...
.
References
Select bibliography
*
External links
Official company website(in Russian)
Actual company photographic products(in Russian)
Website of the company's photography and R&D division(in Russian)
(in English)
(in Russian)
{{DEFAULTSORT:KMZ
Manufacturing companies of the Soviet Union
Optics manufacturing companies
Photography companies of Russia
Photography in the Soviet Union
Soviet photographic lenses
Defence companies of the Soviet Union
Movie camera manufacturers
Krasnogorsky District, Moscow Oblast
Shvabe Holding
Companies based in Moscow Oblast