Zorki's automatic-exposure rangefinder — 35mm, leaf shutter, selenium auto exposure, 1964.
The Zorki 10 is a Soviet 35mm rangefinder made by the KMZ plant at Krasnogorsk near Moscow, a departure from the earlier Barnack-derived Zorki bodies. It appeared around 1964 and was based on the Japanese Ricoh Auto 35 design rather than on the Leica II. The gap list records it in the Leica Thread Mount branch of the Zorki family; verify the exact lens arrangement on any given example.
This is a 35mm coupled-rangefinder camera with a combined rangefinder and viewfinder. It uses a leaf shutter rather than the cloth focal-plane shutter of the earlier Zorki bodies and provides automatic exposure driven by a selenium meter cell around the lens. Focusing is by the coupled rangefinder. As an automatic-exposure body its handling differs markedly from the manual Barnack-style Zorki cameras.
The Zorki 10 suits users who want an automatic-exposure Soviet rangefinder with point-and-shoot simplicity rather than the manual control of the earlier Zorki bodies. Its selenium-cell automation and leaf shutter give straightforward daylight shooting. It is a distinct branch of the Zorki line and appeals to collectors of Soviet automation as much as to everyday shooters.
On the used market the Zorki 10 is inexpensive and offers strong value, but the sample-to-sample quality-control variance typical of former-Soviet-Union bodies means each one should be checked. Inspect the rangefinder patch for contrast and alignment, confirm the leaf shutter fires cleanly across speeds, and test the selenium-cell automatic exposure, which is often weak with age. Because it relies on the meter for automatic exposure, a dead selenium cell limits its usefulness.