The FED is a Soviet rangefinder camera, mass-produced from 1934 until around 1996, and also the name of the factory that made it.
The factory emerged from the small workshops of the Children's labour commune named after Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (the acronym of which gave name to the factory and its products) in December 1927 in Kharkiv (Soviet Ukraine, now Ukraine). Initially the factory was managed by the head of the commune Anton Makarenko and produced simple electrical machinery (drills).[1] In 1932 the new managing director of the factory – A.S. Bronevoy (Russian: А.С. Броневой) – came up with the idea of producing a copy of Leica Camera.[2]
Large-scale production began in 1934, and in the same year the factory was put under NKVD control and Makarenko was fired[citation needed]. Production continued until 1941, when German forces destroyed the factory, and resumed in 1946.
Until 1955 the factory made a huge number of cameras that resemble the Leica rather closely. They are often altered, given "Leica" markings and sold as Leicas. However the FED is cruder: for example the rangefinder cam is pointed and not circular as in Leicas. There are differences in the shutter-release buttons and viewfinder windows. The FED has a gap in the left side of the accessory shoe. Genuine Leicas have film-loading instructions on the inner surface of the baseplate and the screws on the front are always black; on the FED these screws are chrome-coloured. Unscrupulous rebranding of Soviet-made lenses also occurs, since Industar lenses are sometimes sold as Elmar lenses. Camera collectors have described the FED as interesting and often well made and effective so long as the buyer is not deceived into paying a premium for a counterfeit Leica camera.[citation needed]
From 1955 FED began to innovate, combining the rangefinder with the viewfinder in the FED 2 and all its successors. The FED-3 added slow shutter speeds and on the later version FED-3 (b) the film advance was changed from a thumbwheel to a lever. The FED 4 (1964–77) added a non-coupled selenium exposure meter. The FED 5 marked the end of the FED rangefinder family and was meant as a replacement for both the FED-3 and FED-4, which were in production at the time of its introduction. There were versions of the FED-5: the original FED-5 had an exposure meter, the FED-5B was a cheaper version without meter and the later FED-5C had reflected framelines showing field of view of 50mm lens and an exposure meter. All FED-5 cameras were delivered with an Industar I-61L/D lens. Production of FED rangefinder cameras ended in the mid 1990s (Fed-5 Serial Number 545446 was made on 28 February 1994; Fed's site claims that it was in fact 1997: "Start of serial production of vertical drive for control system of tanks. Production of all types of camera has stopped. 8,647,000 cameras were manufactured since the beginning.")
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