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To better under stand the Lu bitel-2, we first have to exam ine its
lin eage. Luck ily its lin eage is only three models long, if you dis -
card the Rolleiflex and other tangen tially re lated models. There's
the Voigtlnder Fo cus ing Brilliant, the Kom so mo lets and the orig i-
nal Lu bitel (the one be fore model 2).
The Voigtlnder Brilliant
Though you could con ceiv ably go back even more in time and
ap point the Rolleiflex as the Ur-Lu bitel, it's more practical to call
the Voigtlnder Brilliant the place where the ret ro spec tive buck
stops. Fact is that the Rollei flex started it all. After its intro duc tion
in the late 1920's, it quickly be came very pop u lar with pro fes -
sional pho tog ra phers, be cause maybe except for the Leica, it
was the first cam era suited specifically for a jour nalis tic style of
pho tog ra phy. It com bined good quality pic tures with a superb
con trol of the final image through the use of a waist-level finder,
and a ro bust con struc tion that did away with flex ible and vulner a -
ble bel lows. Its big film for mat was also an ad van tage over the
Leica, since the emulsions of the era were some what unaf ford -
ing. It's not surpris ing that the Rollei quickly be came a suc cess
and spawned many im ita tions. (The whole Twin Lens Re flex line
ac tu ally, though that's a bit like say ing that all 35mm rangefind-
ers are Leica copies.) The strength of the TLR concept and the
faith of its ad mir ers is in dicated by the fact that even though
Rollei went bank rupt several times and was taken over by all
sorts of par ent facto ries, Rollei flexes are still in pro duc tion to this
day.
After the suc cess of the Rolleiflex and other TLRs in the late
1920's/early 1930's, many man u fac tur ers stepped into the TLR
mar ket with more af ford able mod els, mod els with dif fer ent spec i-
fica tions, models for dif fer ent film for mats, et cetera. One of the
fac to ries to adopt the TLR con cept was Voigtlnder, in their "Bril-
liant" model. As Roland Givan fur ther ex plains , the Brilliant is
the Lu bitel's real fa ther, though the lin eage is a bit in direct.
The first Bril liants looked a great deal like the later Lubitel se ries,
but were much simpler cam eras because they lacked the cog in -
ter link age for fo cus ing. This meant you es sen tially had two cam-
eras in one: a cam era obscura in the top half for com pos ing the
image, and a box camera in the lower half for tak ing the photo.
In te gra tion be tween the two was zero. How ever, this changed
when Voigtlnder made a minor but crucial ad justment by adding
the fa miliar cog inter link in 1938, thus spawn ing the Fo cus ing
Brilliant. This, in essence, was a Lubitel waiting to hap pen. Only it
didn't, for the time being.
The Komsomolets
We tele trans port our selves to Leningrad in the year 1945. The
So viet Union had just triumphed in the Great Pa triotic War and
was lick ing its wounds. Rebuild ing and re vitalisa tion was nowhere
more nec es sary than in Leningrad after 900 days of hard ship
under Ger man siege. To kick start the re build, the So viet Union
dis man tled var ious German op tical facto ries and shipped them
eastward. One of the fac to ries to receive Ger man tool ing and ex -
per tise was GOMZ, who con se quently reap peared in 1946 with
their first new cam era, the Kom so mo lets. It's not clear to what
ex tent the fac tory made use of German labour and cap ital, but to
in tro duce a con sumer camera that soon after the war im plies ei-
ther ex ter nal help or a great prior ity sta tus within the USSR, ei-
ther one being pos sible.
Adopting the name for a mem ber of the Com mu nist youth or gan -
isa tion Kom so mol, the Kom so mo lets was fo cused at an am a teur
au dience. The cam era it self is a fairly straight copy of the non-
fo cus ing Voigtlnder Brilliant, although the de sign is sim plified
and altered some what. (For in stance, the filter door doesn't hinge
like in the orig inal.) The top and bottom lenses aren't syn chro -
nised, even though Voigtlnder already cor rected that be fore the
war in the Fo cus ing Bril liant. My guess is that maybe GOMZ didn't
want to com plicate things at this stage of re cov ery.
The Kom so mo lets was manu fac tured from 1946 to 1951 in a
quan tity of 306.743 (ac cord ing to LOMO ; Prin celle men tions a
fig ure of 25.000 and Ryshkov of 28.000 -- more than a fac tor ten
lower). The de signer was I. Shapiro. Its body was made of bake -
lite. Its shutter was a ZT with speeds of B, 1/25s, 1/50s and
1/100s, the viewing lens a 75mm f/4.5, the tak ing lens a T-21
(Triplet) 80mm f/6.3.
There appear to be a model A and a model B Kom so mo lets. The
model A is some times marked "Model A" on the viewfinder hood,
and is dis tin guish able from the Model B by its me chan ical frame
counter, as opposed to the red win dow in the B model. Some of
the later B models are said to have T-22 75mm f/6.3 lenses,
which proba bly re sem ble the T-22 75mm f/4.5 lenses on the Lu-
bitels to follow.
By the way, all this taken from Roland Givan's Kom so mo lets
page , since I own neither a Kom so mo lets or a Brilliant.
The Lubitel
Grad u ally or not, in 1949 (ac cord ing to fac tory data , although
this would mean a two-year over lap with the Kom so mo lets,
which I think is un likely), the Lubitel saw the light. Ac cord ing to
LOMO, this cam era was pro duced from 1949 to 1956 in a quan-
tity of 1.361.110. It's best seen as a ma ture Kom so mo lets: it
added focus ing ca pa bility by means of an inter link be tween the
viewing and tak ing lenses (just like Voigtlnder had done be fore
the war, only using cogs with a dif fer ent size and pitch), its ZT-5
shutter had a larger range of shut ter speeds than the Komso mo -
lets (B, 1/10s-1/200s), its view ing lens was a speedy 60mm
f/2.8, and its tak ing lens a T-22 75mm f/4.5, both faster and
more widean gu lar than on the Kom so mo lets.
Lu bitel means "Am a teur". In ciden tally there's a ver sion of the Lu -
bitel la beled "Amatr" for the East Ger man mar ket. It's inter est-
ing that GOMZ didn't name their general West ern ex port ver sion
the "Am a teur" -- I think maybe because any one not familiar with
so cialist nam ing philos o phy would be put down by such a catch-
all un com petitive name.
The Lubitel-2
After one mil lion three hun dred thousand Lu bitels produced,
GOMZ re-evalu ated the de sign and de cided to add a self-timer
and a flash sync. This re design was done by G. Barkovski, ac -
cord ing to Prin celle, thus cre ating the Lu bitel-2.
The liter a ture claims that the Lu bitel-2 came in two shutters: a
ZT-5 with speeds of 1/10s to 1/200s, and a ZT-8 with 1/15s to
1/250s. I don't know what to make of this: I think the dif fer ence
in speeds is prob a bly an arte fact of la beling rather than any thing
tech nical, and is the re sult of the postwar in tro duc tion of the new
power-of-two shutter speed sys tem: 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 (noted
as 1/15), 1/32 (noted as 1/30), 1/64 (noted as 1/60), 1/128
(noted as 1/125), 1/256 (noted as 1/250), 1/512 (noted as
1/500), 1/1024 (noted as 1/1000), and so on, that took the place
of the ear lier dec imal system that counted 1/10, 1/25, 1/50,
1/100, 1/200, et cetera. Con verting to the newer sys tem sim ply
means writing 1/60 in stead of 1/50, and as sum ing the dif fer ence
to be within your mar gin of error.
Dif fer ent mark ings would be a silly thing to change a shutter type
name for. Maybe the differ ence be tween ZT-5 and ZT-8 is less
vir tual I think the ZT-8 is the ZT-5 with added self-timer and X
sync. And since the shutter ca pa bilities are the only dis cern ing
fea tures be tween the Lu bitel and the Lubitel-2, I think there are
no Lu bitel-2's with ZT-5's people just got that im pres sion be -
cause cer tain early Lu bitel-2's still had the Lubitel's old shutter
speed range. But that's just my hy poth e sis.
The Lubitel-2 was man u fac tured from 1955 to 1980 in a quantity
of 2.232.245 (again fac tory data ). It was superceded in 1976
by the Lu bitel-166 (and later the 166B and -U), which shares its
con cept with the Lu bitel-2 (cheap 6x6 TLR) but is really a whole
dif fer ent cam era. See my Lu bitel-166U page for more info.
Variations
If you look closer, there are a lot of varia tions be tween seem-
ingly sim ilar Lubitel-2's. Since I only own two ex am ples and both
are from the pre-1965 GOMZ era, I don't have a lot of com par i-
son. How ever, with the help of Roland Givan and from look ing
at Lu bitel-2 pic tures on the Inter net, a pic ture of constant change
emerges. This has to be, be cause moulds, casts and stamps are
sub ject to rapid pres sure and heat ero sion and need to be re gen -
er ated every 50.000 units or so.
If you line up Lu bitel-2's of dif fer ent vin tage, maybe the most ob -
vious dif fer ence are the subtle changes in the logo. Though su -
per ficially all Lu bitel-2's have the same scripted logo, there are
quite some dif fer ences between an early and a later one. For in -
stance, the logo on the top of this page oc curs in a sharper,
more geometric form on newer cam eras, and there's also a ver -
sion with a very wide loop on the L. I'm in clined to believe that
there are many more varia tions, since they ap par ently en graved
new stamps man u ally each time an old one wore out. Lubitel-2's
were sup plied with both latin and cyrillic logos.
An other dif fer ence, but more sub tle, is the chang ing tex ture in
the bake lite. Each time the body molds wore out, they cre ated
new ones with new random leather tex tures. These varia tions in
struc ture could con ceiv ably be used as forensic data to date and
group cam eras. (I would have loved to set up a finger print data -
base to scru tinize the world's Lu bitels, but unfor tu nately I don't
have the dozens of cam eras nec es sary for a pro ject like that.)
Other changes include the mould for the fil ter door: on older
cam eras it's engraved in Russ ian only, but newer cam eras have
bilin gual Eng lish/Russ ian markings. Also, the wind knob is clearly
man u fac tured from dif fer ent moulds through out the model's life.
The de sign of the spring plate to hold the lower film roll also dif -
fers among cam eras. And so on. A very ob vious differ ence be -
tween GOMZ and LOMO Lu bitels is the pres ence of the GOMZ
logo in the hood of the for mer; this dates the camera to be fore
1965, the year when GOMZ be came LOMO.
One puzzling facet of Lu bitel-2's is their se r ial num ber scheme.
Gen er ally, So viet-Russ ian cam eras have se r ial num bers that re -
flect the year of manu fac ture in the two first dig its, so that for in-
stance 69xxx in dicates 1969. However, older Lu bitel-2's don't ad -
here to this scheme. The ser ial num bers of my two pre-1965
cam eras are 005118 and 098333, which reveals noth ing about
the year of manu fac ture. It could be that these num bers are se -
quen tial and I own the 5.118th and 98.333rd Lubitel-2 re spec -
tively, but with more than two million cam eras manu fac tured, six
dig its aren't enough to ad dress them all. However, later cameras
have seven-digit se r ial numbers and obey the date cod ing sys-
tem. The confus ing thing is that the orig inal Lubitel does seem to
have a date-coded se r ial num ber.
The Lubitel-2 was mar keted under a va riety of brands. The most
com mon is the plain Lu bitel-2, either with latin or cyril lic car -
tridge, but you can also find the Kalimar TL R100, the Global 676,
and pos sibly other variants for dif fer ent mar kets.
A closer look
With the his tor ical and ge nealog ical details out of the way, let's
take a closer look at the Lu bitel-2. First, the case. I own two:
both are made of a laminated ma te r ial, prob a bly vinyl, that was
punched into a pattern and sewn to gether to form a three-dimen -
sional construct. The older GOMZ case is a red dish, leather like
brown with the GOMZ logo on the lens bulge, whereas the newer
LOMO case is glossy black with the LOMO logo on the bulge. Both
cases are ex actly sim ilar, except for the fact that the LOMO case
has a (newer) 1/4" thread brush and the older one 3/8".
I don't like these cases. They're too inflex ible and too loosely fit -
ting to actu ally be an asset, and the top flap is hell to po sition
cor rectly on the cam era be cause of two loose "ears" on the side
that get hooked up in thou sands of differ ent ways with the strap
lugs and the rewind knob. The best thing is to leave it off, or use
the Lubitel-2 without a case en tirely. For tu nately the strap lugs
are attached to the cam era and not to the case, as with theZenit-
E.
Next, the camera itself. I own two Lu bitels, both of them GOMZ
mod els (per the im print on the viewfinder hood) with 3/8" tripod
thread, and all my ex pe rience is taken from those two mod els.
Later Lu bitels may dif fer slightly.
Overview
The general scheme of the Lubitel-2 is easy to give. There's a
viewfinder on the top with a magnify ing glass, of which the lens
is cou pled to the tak ing lens, there's a shutter with some eas ily
un der stood func tions, there's a red win dow on the back with a lit-
tle knob to ro tate a pro tec tive plate in place, there's an ex -
tractable rewind knob, there are strap lugs, there's a tripod
brush, and there is the back door lock. On the in side, there's a
pres sure plate, the film gate, the film rollers, some metal plating
to keep the rolls of film in place, and that's it. The Lu bitel-2 is so
sim ple that it doesn't sur prise me that all parts are num bered:
that way the cam era could be pieced to gether by the lowliest of
un e d u cated work ers.
Filter compartment
My first rub is the fil ter com partment. Appar ently the Lu bitel-2
was sold without fil ters, even though the camera had a built-in
filter com partment. Not that it's very im pres sive. Firstly, the
screw that locks the door is spring-loaded by a rather stiff spring,
mean ing that when you unscrew it, both spring and screw ex -
plode in your face. I've actu ally lost one of the lock ing screws
this way. Secondly, be cause of the stiff spring and the brittle
plas tic, the thread in the cam era tends to snap and strip under
load, mak ing it impos sible to seal the com partment off tightly.
Both my cam eras have this problem. The door is still held in
place, but there is so much slack that it can ro tate around the
screw, ex pos ing any filter to the out side environ ment and nul lify -
ing the protec tional value of the cham ber. But this is only a
minor point since you would usually keep the Lu bitel in its case
any way, sealing off the com partment.
Viewfinder
The waist-level viewfinder is fairly con ven tional as TLRs go, and
con sists of the usual lens, mirror, matte glass and fold ing hood
with magnify ing glass. Flip ping open the viewfinder hood, we
have the choice be tween using it as a sports viewfinder or using
the matte glass. We in voke the sports viewfinder by flipping
down the cen ter part of the hood (with the GOMZ logo) and click -
ing it be hind a small notch on the rear wall. This cre ates a crude
frame. The ad van tage is being able to look at the scene with
both eyes, and not see ing every thing left-right inverted. The dis -
ad van tage is not being able to check your focus.
The matte glass is a bit of a joke. Nor mal TLRs have fres nel
lenses or at least a conven tional matte glass, but the Lu bitel-2
only has a globu lar lens with a cir cu lar matte spot in the cen ter.
On nor mal TLRs you're able to see the whole frame more or less
as it would look on film, only left-right in verted, but on the Lu bi-
tel-2 you just see a blob of light di rectly as it comes from the
lens. It works, to be sure, as long as you keep your eye steady
above the cen ter of the image to not see the circu lar frill of the
viewing lens. To focus, you use the matte spot in the center. You
either focus on sight or you use the mag nify ing glass, and pray
that both your lenses are calibrated right.
Shutter
The shutter is the most com plex part of the cam era, or better
put, the least simple part. It con tains these items, numbered 1 to
9:
1. Be fore you can trip the shutter, you need to cock it with this
lever, shown here in cocked po sition.
2. The shutter re lease lever. Move down wards to trip.
3. The cable re lease hub.
4. The aper ture chang ing grip. Read out is through in dicating nee -
dle #8.
5. The shutter speed lever. Read-out is through #9, the notch on
the side of the ring.
6. The self-timer lever.
7. The X flash hub.
8. The aper ture in dicating nee dle.
9. The notch in the shut ter speed ring that points to the set
speed.
Film compartment
Open ing the back of the camera by si multa ne ously pry ing loose
the two latches, you gain ac cess to the film compartment.
There's noth ing of note re ally: there's the gate, the film rollers,
the ex tractable wind knob and the two bays for the 120-film
spools, but noth ing dra matically spectac u lar or spec tac u larly dra -
matic. It's both neces sary and suf ficient, like so much on this
cam era.
Lenses and image quality
The viewing lens is a 60mm f/2.8, the tak ing lens a coated T-22
(Triplet) 75mm f/4.5. The dif fer ence in focal length is be cause
the size of the viewfinder isn't 66 but only around 44, so
scaled accord ingly. I haven't re ally shot a lot of film with my Lu-
bitels, but if one thing is obvious from the few pic tures I made,
it's that this cam era deserves its rep u ta tion as being lower class.
The im ages are not very sharp and do not have very good con -
trast. They ac tu ally re minded me of toy camera im ages, al-
though this cam era is no toy camera in the strict sense of the
word.
But how much quality do you need? Peo ple have long since con-
ceded that bad image qual ity can be a good thing, and that
LOMO's worse attempts at making cam eras are prof itable shlock.
So what if the tak ing lens has more of a "lesser un sharp ness"
than ac tual sharpness to shift around with, and so what that
depth-of-view takes over at inter medium distance and aper tures
to bol lix your care fully planned DOF images when the Lu bitel-2
is a fun cam era to use, a bit dinky in times, but rugged, in ter est-
ing, old-fash ioned and charm ing?
Excerpt from the 1971 book/brochure "Dis cover Re -
ward ing Pho tog ra phy" by Ronald Spillman A.I.I.P:
Lu bitel-2
An ex tremely ver sa tile 66cm twin-lens fo cus ing re flex tak -
ing twelve pic tures on 120 roll film. Although this cam era is
priced at the lower end of the scale, it in cor po rates most fea -
tures re quired by the keen be gin ner and yet has a per for -
mance that will satisfy the critical user.
The lens is a 75mm coated f/4.5, which focuses down to 4'.
The leaf shutter is be hind the lens, has five speeds from
1/15th to 1/250th sec ond, and is syn chro nized for flash.
The Lu bitel-2 is a camera with out frills. You wind on the film
by means of an ordinary knob and there is a win dow to show
you the frame num ber ing on the back paper. There is a
clever he lical screw mount to the tak ing lens. As this is ro -
tated it turns the upper, viewing lens to similar focus. View ing
is by means of an always-in-fo cus con vex lens giving a bril -
liant image. A cir cu lar ground-glass spot at the cen tre is used
for fo cus ing. There is a folding mag nifier and a flip-up di rect
vision viewfinder incor po rated in the fold ing hood. The cam -
era con tains a filter com partment, has a de layed ac tion de -
vice built into the shutter, and is sup plied with ever-ready
case.
Re synchronising the lenses
It's not too uncom mon for the Lubitel-2's two lenses to lose
their inter mesh ing and go out of sync. Usu ally tak ing out the
slack in the sys tem is easy, but restor ing the proper cor re -
spon dence be tween the lenses is a prob lem. To do an exact
job, open the rear of the camera and tape a strip of blank
film onto the film gate, mak ing sure that it's in the same posi-
tion as nor mally the film would be. Then set the top lens to
in fin ity and use the film as a ground glass to calibrate the
bottom lens on in fin ity.
Inter nal links
The Lu bitel-2's Eng lish man ual
The Lu bitel-166U