an HDR image of the inside of a disused factory, taken upstairs at Fallen Industries, in Arrowe Park on the Wirral

an HDR image of the inside of a disused factory, taken upstairs at Fallen Industries, in Arrowe Park on the Wirral

The Krasnogorsk 3 is a clockwork Russian 16mm mirror-reflex movie camera manufactured at the KMZ factory (Krasnogorskij Mechanicheskij Zavod which translates to Krasnogorsk Mechanical Plant) near Moscow. It was still being manufactured up until the early 1990s.

Most later K-3s have an M42x1 lens mount (also known as a Zenit or Pentax screw mount), although there are some older cameras which use the same bayonet mount as earlier Krasnogorsk movie cameras. The standard lens for the K3 is the Meteor-5 17 to 69mm F1.9 Zoom lens.

The camera uses 100ft(30m) reels of 16mm film, the film can be either single or double perforated, when fully wound the camera will run through about 5m of film (approximately 30 seconds of footage at 24 frames per second) in one go. The camera can be run at 8, 12, 16, 24, 32, or 48 frames per second.

The Seagull 205a is a fixed lens 35mm rangefinder produced in the mid to late 1970′s in the Peoples Republic of China at the original Seagull factory in Shanghai. It is a fully manual camera with no automation at all, and doesn’t have a light meter built in, meaning that for accurate exposure one needs skill at judging lighting conditions and appropriate settings, or an external lightmeter.

The lens is a Haiou-45, which has a focal length 38mm with a maximum aperture of f2.8, it produces very sharp and contrasty images, it also produces highly saturated colour in images taken with the camera.

The Seagull 4A-109 TLR was designed and produced by the Shanghai General Camera factory – located in Song Jiang county in the Peoples Republic of China. It is a fully manual medium format twin lens reflex camera.

The 4A-109 has two fixed lenses, the bottom one is used for taking the image, and the the top one is used for composing the image and focusing on a fresnel screen at the top of the body, inside the fold up hood.

The taking lens is a 75mm Haiou SA-99 with a maximum aperture of f3.5, the top viewing lens is also a 75mm Haiou SA-99 but it has a fixed aperture of f2.8. Due to the camera using an leaf shutter inside the lens assembly, it can synchronise with a flashgun at any speed, up to and including the cameras fastest shutter speed of 1/500th of a second, making it very adaptable for flash photography.

The Neva-2 is a double 8 cine camera designed and built by the LOMO factory in St. Petersburg around 1962.

The Neva-2 has a selectable frame rates, at 8 fps, 16 fps, 24 fps, and 48 fps, although the faster the frame rate the louder the camera is, as it runs completely on clockwork, although other than the noise this brings one advantage over a motorised cine camera there is no need for batteries, just turn a dial on the side, and away you go. When fully wound it will run for just over a minute at 48fps, which is pretty impressive really, as it’s equates to about two thirds of a reel of double 8 film in a single long shot.

It has a turret lens mount, meaning that lenses can be changed rapidly, just press a button on the front of the turret, and it springs forward, then you simply rotate it to the lens you want and push it back in.

The Moskva 5, is a folding medium format rangefinder, produced by KMZ, Krasnogorskii Mechanicheskii Zavod or Krasnogorsk Mechanical factory in the late 1950s, the one shown was produced in 1959. It uses 120 roll film, and produces exposures of either 6×9 or 6×6 with an adapter fitted inside.

The Moskva 5 is based on the Zeiss Super Ikonta

It has an f3.5 105mm Industar-24L lens, which provides roughly equivalent to a 35mm standard lens with a focal length of 50mm when used with a 6×9 exposure, or with the 6×6 adapter it provides a mild telephoto.

The Kiev 88 is a Ukrainian Medium format SLR, It’s development started with the Salyut which went into mass production in 1957 at the Arsenal factory in Kiev. It has interchangeable Viewfinders, including a top down viewfinder, and metered and unmetered pentaprism viewfinders (the viewfinder shown is the TTL spot meter pentaprism), and interchangeable backs, allowing you to swap film halfway through a roll, using either 120 roll film, with 6×6 or 6×4.5 size exposures, or polaroid instant film.

The example in the picture is an upgraded version of the Arsenal factory model, produced by Arax who are also based in the Ukraine.