The Zorki Saga...

By PF Staff in Influential Photo Gear on Feb 10, 2013

Israel, 1969. Two years married, our first daughter Michal is born.

My late Aunt Rivka returns from a very emotional trip to the Ukraine (Soviet Union then…), visiting her sister. Deep in her suitcase, wrapped in clothes, lies a beautiful Zorki 4 rangefinder camera.

Must have been expensive… but nothing stopped my brave and determined aunt Rivka, who loved me very much,  and proudly handed me the camera in its brown leather case.

When I thought about this submission, I had no doubt that this Zorki 4 made a permanent, extremely powerful impact on my life.

Photography became part of me in every possible way, made me a visual story teller… 

This camera, by the way, was the only non-Pentax I ever held in my hand. Years later it was replaced by the legendary Pentax ME Super, to be followed by P3, PZ-1P, *istD, K10D, K-20D, K-7, K-5…and who knows what next.

43 years passed, and my passion for photography is more powerful than ever…

I am attaching one of the very first BW film strips I took with the Zorki (probably early 1970), with our little Michal proudly wearing my wife Ruthie's slippers…  

- Itzik