Turist

The Turist (Турист) was a strut folding camera with a rectangular Bakelite body, made in the USSR.

The Turist was one of the three main camera products of the Soviet market in 1936 (ten years after the Soviet camera industry started), the two others being the folding-bed camera Fotokor No. 1 (and a similar camera made by Arfo) which was expected to be a Soviet Avus, and as top product the 35mm FED rangefinder camera. In the same year the first series of prototypes of the Sport 35mm SLR camera was ready and criticized in the July 1936 issue of Sovjetskoe Foto. That camera still needed some refinement until its production in 1937. So the Turist is the low-end Soviet camera product of its time, like the Fotokor in falling short of Soviet photographers' high expectations, whilst the high-end products already reached for the promising 35mm camera market on an advanced quality level.

• Type: strut folding plate camera
• Manufacturer: GOMZ
• Year of release: 1934
• Film: 6.5×9 plate
• Lens: GOMZ Industar 1:3.5/105 mm
• Shutter: Automat 1/25-1/100 shutter
• Finder: frame finder with optical elements, and additional sports finder