Talk:Zenit (camera)

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[edit] Zenit vs. Zenith

I've seen these cameras referred to as both "Zenit" and "Zenith". It seems that some manuals (possibly commissioned by UK importers TOE) refer to them as "Zenith", but all the bodies retain the "Zenit" spelling.

Was the "Zenith" spelling used elsewhere and did it have any sanction from the manufacturers themselves? Although TOE were de facto the official importers, whether this was ever an "official" spelling is open to discussion, and probably unimportant. Best just to note the spelling discrepancy, and where/how it was used IMHO.

Fourohfour 15:03, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

According to russian-language articles on http://www.zenitcamera.com/, cameras itself were always marked as "Zenit", not "Zenith" ("the only exception was a small series of "Zenit-S". Err... "Zenith-S"). And registered trademark of KMZ factory is "Zenit". Nevertheless some importers use "Zenith" word in their printed manuals and ads. Moreover the name "Zenith" sometimes were used by Soviet export-trading organizations (may be to increase readability?). In the Amateur Photographer magazine in Dec 1978 was printed a 'disambiguition article' about it: "The Russian word 3EHI/IT is translated as Zenit, but we all know the cameras as Zenith. The dictionary definition of Zenith is 'the point of the heavens directly overhead' and 'the highest point' (which is probably the meaning the Russians would prefer)." (I use pseudographic to replace cyrillic letters - S.I.) As far as I know the difference between names was considered as unimportant and there were no sanctions.

One more part of answer, may be, is in the fact that "Zenith" mark was already registered by other companies in some countries. For example, in USA "Zenith" is a trademark of Zenith Electronics Corp. (Due to this fact all attempts to register "Zenit" in US were unsuccesful - "marks looks similar".) And "misspelled mark" could be used more freely.

So it was always called "Zenit" in the US? Personally, I found the dual-spelling to be confusing; they should have just left the name as "Zenit", but it's no big deal.

P.S. Thank you for your edition of the article. My English is far from ideal :(

Sergey Ilyin 09:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how much of the article was your work, but it was pretty acceptable English to start off with. Most of the fixes I made were (e.g.) minor omissions of "the" and improvements in phrasing and flow. It was still perfectly understandable, which is a lot better than some articles (many of them written by native English speakers...!)

If I could ever speak a foreign language as well as the article was originally written, I'd still consider myself a good speaker, so no problems there. :) Fourohfour 10:22, 28 March 2006 (UTC)