Belomo Chaika 3

Another Soviet gem. This half-frame camera was manufactured between 1972 and 1973. Its name means "Seagull" and it was named in honour of the first female cosmonaut, Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova.

Its Industar-69 lens offers a focal length of 28mm (roughly 40mm on a full-frame 35mm camera) and it will focus down to 0.8 metres. It has a leaf shutter with a top speed of 1/250 and a PC flash socket that syncs at all shutter speeds. It also has a built in light meter. The tripod mount is on the side, which orients the camera to takes landscape images (it naturally takes portrait images).

The film speed settings on the light meter dial are in GOST (about 90% of ISO/ASA).

The rewind mechanism is geared and quite heavy, which puts a lot of strain on the film when advancing, so be gentle when winding this camera. The sprocket holes on the film can be torn if too heavy handed or if the rewind sticks a little.  This can be helped by periodically turning the rewind backwards to remove the tension.

The half frame format is great value for money, giving 72 frames on a standard 36 frame roll of 35mm film. The camera and lens together are very small so they travel easily too. Just remember to manually stop down the lens before taking the photo. Also, its very easy to accidentally trigger the shutter release when handling this camera so don't wind on until you are ready to take the next photo.

Story time with Nicky.
I've got 99 problems and a Chaika is one. It's quite an odd camera in some regards. For example, the lens unscrews from the camera. Great you might think. It takes interchangeable lenses. Wrong. There is one and only one lens for this camera. But it takes lenses with an M39 screw mount... I hear you say...Why not just take a lens off a fancy Leica and put it on the Chaika instead? Well quite. Except the lens flange to film plane distance on the other M39 lenses is different to what our little Chaika requires. So it is stuck with the Industar-69. Then why did they make it removable? I hear you ask. Well obviously so you could use the lens on a dark room enlarger. What's wrong with that? you ask. They never made the enlarger.

This wasn't why the camera was a problem though. Allow me to explain.
[edited by Tash. For the original, funnier, version ask Nicky when you see him]

Natasha had a training course in London, this would keep her busy for a day and leave Nicky with not much else to do. So he packed a camera and with a day pass for the tube set off to explore funky London town. Not usually one for sprawling urban metropolises, Nicky was a little unsure what he might do all day, aside a little street photography (not his strong suit) or maybe some architecture photography (much better here, the subjects don't move or complain), and inevitably found himself in camera shops. Now this wasn't because he has a camera collecting problem (shush you), or because he feels that if only he had a little more gear he might just be a little better at photography. He was actually looking for a ball head for the Gorilla pod, which is not a crazy thing to want. The fun part is that to try and find a suitable candidate he visited pretty much every camera shop in central London. This meant the discovery of many cool and interesting (also expensive) things, such as some 6x17 panoramic cameras (which he didn't buy but now wants), some cheap second hand filters (a few of which he did buy), a few exciting OM accessories (which he didn't buy) and one very special Olympus OM Zuiko lens that he knew Natasha could not resist, but those are tales for a different day.
The next day they returned home and filled with excitement about all the wondrous things Nicky had seen Natasha was keen that on their next trip to London she would also visit these magical shops full of goodies and temptation.
A few months (and one wedding) later Natasha and Nicky returned to London for another training course, only this time there was an extra day added so that Natasha could see some camera shops and in one such shop a small unassuming 28mm lens did catch her eye. It was a very tidy little Industar which she figured would be a nice companion for her (well actually her Dad's) Zenit E, so it was quickly obtained for only a few pounds and stashed with some other goodies.
Once back home they did try and mount the lens on the Zenit only to find that it was an M39 thread and not the expected M42 (they hadn't taken a measuring device with them to London nor had the shop known exactly what the lens was), left a little confused they did ask the mighty seer of Google what on earth the lens actually was. Now a small surprise was in order for what they had found was this lens was made for one (and only one) camera, a Belomo Chaika.
Now then, what would you do in such a situation? Keep the lens as a curio, sell the lens, or go and buy a Chaika missing its lens to make a happy camera once more? What do you mean you wouldn't have bought the lens or had the Zenit... What kind of mad man are you? Who wouldn't want a Zenit?
Right, back to the story.
Natasha found a Chaika 3 on the usual Bay of Es and after its long and eventful journey in the fine postal services of Russia and Great Britain it did arrive in our post box. The lens was duly mounted and a happy little camera we did have. After a quick check that the shutter worked (it seemed to, but felt rather like it was the same speed no matter what setting) and the winding wound some film was loaded. Filled with the joy of having a new camera to play with and that a whopping 72 shots could be squeezed onto one roll of film Natasha set off on a walk to take some test shots. Part way along said walk the problems started to appear as in true Russian camera fashion the Chaika tore the film, not new to this (the Zenit does the same) Natasha returned home to develop what she had taken and save the rest for another day.
After developing the shots many came out underexposed, thinking that the lighting that day was a little adverse and the average meter readings were not ideal for the scenes the rest of the roll was run through the camera with similar results.
After the roll was finished Natasha noticed that the light meter had begun to stick half way so Nicky did what he always does and took the camera apart to investigate, upon which he discovered a few things.

[Tech speak alert]
The film rewind mechanism had a bent cog in it which explained why it didn't run smoothly, this in turn was preventing the shutter speed control from moving correctly, which may help explain the similar feeling shutter speeds, and it turned out that the same speed control mechanism was in need of tensioning.
So Nicky set about learning how yet another camera was designed and built. It turns out that the shutter has a very, very reliable action (apparently an improvement over the Chaika 2) and double exposure prevention mechanism. The film advance cocks the shutter, there is no way to fire it off before it is cocked and by that point the film has been advanced. The speed selection is where this shutter differs from most. When cocked the shutter allows a small spring to unwind, this spring drives a couple of gears and a small flywheel, the speed setting limits how far it unwinds, and therefore how far it has to wind up again. When fired the shutter release slams forward into a lever which spins the gears and rewinds the spring, the flywheel damps the movement and so the speed is controlled. There are no asymmetric gears, no escape mechanism, none of the usual clockwork actions, just a spring and flywheel geared together. This ingenious little mechanism is actually very reliable and can be very simply adjusted by means of winding the spring. The bent cog on the film rewind was preventing the spring from unwinding when the two contacted each other, that too was quickly solved and the camera was on a quick route to recovery. This just left the light meter, a simple selenium cell linked to the usual coil and magnet. The magnet and coil are inside a small metal cylinder which is placed in a cylindrical hole in the camera and two small grub screws pinch it in place. This is incredibly simple as it can be adjusted by slackening a screw and rotating the magnet assembly.
Both the light meter and shutter mechanism are on top of the camera. The light meter and shutter speed selection knob are linked together and screw onto the top plate. The shutter mechanism is screwed onto the camera body. The two come together when the to plate is attached. This means it has a surprisingly advanced coupled light meter and shutter. The aperture required is indicated on the top of the shutter speed selection knob and you set the aperture manually.
Following reassembly Nicky ran some HP5+ through the camera to check the shutter speeds were now working, the results are shown below. Next the light meter needs setting and checking but that requires some brighter sun than we have right now. Until then the trusty Ikophot will have to be used.
The only other interesting thing to note is that if the shutter release is held down the shutter will fire when re-cocked and as we found out the film will have advanced.  It is also possible to remove the advance knob and attach a motor or crank to the advance shaft making this a tiny half frame movie camera, although that is an experiment for another day.
I shot 3 exposures at each setting, the first one was on the film exposed to light during loading, remember in half frame cameras you may need to expose extra blank shots to get onto clean film.
The idea is simple, each shutter speed is 1 stop less exposure so the aperture must be opened up 1 stop to compensate. If all the frames come out with roughly the same exposure then the shutter is consistent and working at roughly the right speeds relative to each other. This is not completely reliable as a method as it needs the aperture marks to also be accurate, but in the fuzzy world of analogue photography I'm going to say its all close enough. The above shots get slightly brighter towards the higher speeds so I may need to tweak the shutter timing slightly, or repeat the test with ND filters to eliminate the aperture as a variable.