Sport (SLR)
The Sport (Cyrillic: "Спорт") is one of the two earliest SLR cameras using the 35mm film format, made by the Soviet camera manufacturer GOMZ, the other being the German Ihagee Kine Exakta. An estimated number of 20000 cameras was made between 1937 and 1941. According to some sources only the construction plans for the camera were near completion by January 1935, however an early prototype may have been ready by the second half of 1935 when the Kine Exakta prototype was ready. But whilst the Kine Exakta was presented in the spring of 1936, the production start for the Sport was scheduled for the 20th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution on the 7 November 1937. According to some sources the launch was around that date. If a working prototype of the Sport was ready before that of the Kine Exakta, it would be the world's first 35mm SLR, but that is not conclusively decided. The development of the Sport was a lengthy process for various reasons, including being a completely new and quite unique design, with a vertically running metal focal plane shutter, while the Kine Exakta merely was a redesign based on an earlier rollfilm camera. The cheif engineer for the early stages of the Sport was A. O. Gelgar, later also assisted by the constructors Rybnikow and Pimenov.
specifications
|
| unique Soviet SLR design: the Sport |
- Type: SLR
- Manufacturer: GOMZ
- Year of launch: 1937
- Number produced: ~20,000
- Film: 35mm in cartridges for 2m film, enough for 50 24×36mm exposures
- Lens: Industar-10 1:3.5/50mm
- Lens mount: bayonet
- Shutter: real focal plane shutter made of two metal plates, speeds 1/25 to 1/500 sec.
- Viewfinder: screen over the mirror, light well with loupe over the screen, additional optical viewfinder
- Film transport: from one cartridge into a second cartridge
- Dimensions: 133×103×68 mm
- Weight: 765 g (with lens)
Links
- a critical note on the Sport
- An Italian source confirming the Sport' claim.
- Sport on rus-camera.com
- Sport on Sovietcams.com
Literature
- Richard Hummel, "Kine Exakta" oder "Sport"? Welches war die erste Spiegelreflex-Kleinbildkamera? Die Lebenswerke von Karl Nüchterlein and A.O. Gelgar, 1997, ISBN 3-89506-160-3 (Kine Exakta or Sport? Which one was the first 35mm SLR? The life-works of K. Nüchterlein and A.O. Gelgar)
- sources of Hummel's brochure concerning the Sport: Sovjetskoe Foto, issues 1934/7, 1935/1, 1936/4, 1936/7, 1937/11
