There are good tradecraft reasons why KGB and GRU personnel would have used a Soviet camera – they would be able to get special high-performance lenses that would provide sharper and more detailed imaged images than were available from the standard product.
“Off Topic Alert” (want to keep reading about aviation? 🙂 skip this post)
The KGB photo cameras were famous for some pretty wild designs (things like the “through-the-wall” Lenocks were…strange), but if we are talking about the sixties and seventies, the Soviet or the East Geman industry would be hard pressed to build something that could rival a Hasselblad or Rollei with a high end (Western, not the “Jena” type) Carl Zeiss prime lens and a Kodachrome 25 in terms of “sharpness”.
For all practical purposes the West has not has a camera industry since the mid-1960s, so any Western visitor to MAKS (whether ‘spook’ or bona fide) is likely to have a Japanese camera. Using a Leica (the sole surviving German brand) would make one a bit conspicuous or even suspicious. Personally, I’m known for having carried a pre-war Zeiss Contax II at shows, but I wasn’t trying to look inconspicuous.
A Contax II?! And i thought that my three decades Nikon FM was decidedly “old fashioned”! 🙂
Cheers (and sorry i am going to keep the DAVE, Phoon and Flanker diet for the next few posts)
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