This Zorki 5 was made in Krasnogorsk, Russia, in the 1950s.
It is evolved from the classic German Leica rangefinder design, with some added refinements, such as two flash outlets for both types of flash, a shutter speed dial that can be adjusted with camera either wound to next frame or not, and a rapid advance lever.
But it remains a bottom-loading design, the back does not open.
It is fully compatible with Leica rangefinder 39 mm threaded interchangeable lenses.

My example came from online auction recently. It needed general cleaning and repair, and I had to re-tension the shutter drum springs in order for it to work correctly at all speeds.

A good friend in another city made this proposal to our little group of photographers:

"Fellows:
A modest proposal:
On the heels of our 10-10-OM10 event...how about a time dedicated to shooting our favorite Soviet-made camera?
Nov. 9, 1989 was the date the Berlin Wall came down...forerunner to the end of the Soviet Union which occured on December 8, 1991. Might these be significant dates
for such a proposed event? We could shoot anytime between those dates.
Or, we could observe the 76th anniversary of the FED camera...named for Felix
Edmundovitch Dzerjinski. Exact date unkown but camera was released in 1934.
What do you all think? All the best, dave"

We elected to do our shoot between Nov. 9 and Dec. 8.

I loaded the Zorki 5 with a fresh roll of Walgreens branded ASA 200 print film and sought to catch some late Fall Color.
Images are shot mostly with the INDUSTAR-22 1:3.5 F=50mm lens from my Zorki 1, N.5306215... this is a copy of the classic Leica f:3.5 Elmar.
I also packed my genuine Ernst Leitz Wetzlar Elmar f=9cm 1:4 No.518071 in black enameled brass body, and my Russian JUPITER-11 1:4 F=13.5cm No. 5807817.
In 3 of the shots below, with the distant hollow broken tree trunk, I compare the 3 lenses with the same settings and vantage point.

Some of the shots are here in my yard and on my street, the remainder are at the Claire Gempp Davidson Memorial Conservation Area in Sunset Hills, Missouri.

I believe that the bit of overexposure evident at one end of many of the frames probably indicates a second curtain that is a bit under-tensioned relative to first curtain, so that the exposure is not quite even across the film plane. But this is an improvement over what I started with; when I got the camera, second curtain was failing to close at the end of travel. I am hesitant to speed up the second curtain further, since that could lead to the curtain pulling loose where it is glued to the rollers. I am considering relaxing the tension on the first curtain.

Please click on thumbnails to see enlarged.
All images are ©2010 E.J.Kowalski.