Zenit-122 / Special Edition "50th Anniversary of KMZ" 1992 Titanium Gray Finish
35mm Full Frame / Single Lens Reflex ..... lens: MIR-1B - 37mm f.3.7 (not original)
Body serial # 50923558 ..... Lens serial # 87017834 ..... year : 1992 (lens 1987)
factory : KMZ / Krasnogorsk, Russian Federation ..... production: uncertain

Notes: The Zenit-122 "Titanium" 50th Anniversary of KMZ Special Edition camera was produced in 1992. The Krasnogorskii Mekanicheskii Zavod was officially started in 1942 in an old enamelware factory just outside of Moscow, and initially KMZ produced optical products needed by the Soviet Army such as binoculars, rifle scopes, and rangefinders.

This special edition camera is not really made or finished with titanium, it is just painted, at the factory, with a titanium gray metallic paint. There are no differences between this Zenit-122 and the production model, aside from the "titanium" color, the yellow-gold silk-screened "122" and the commemorative logo on the top of the prism housing.

The KMZ website states that between 1989 and 2005 there were 1,971,745 Zenit-122 cameras made! There is some controversy as to how many of these Special Edition cameras were produced. The serial numbers on this edition always start with "5092xxxx". A good KMZ source states that there were 6,541 of these cameras made between 1992 and 1994, but many doubt this as these cameras do not show up in collections or on the marketplace very often and are considered quite rare. Other numbers like "only 300 cameras" are stated by some collectors.

It would seem that this edition was made for export to English speaking countries, probably by the Soviet-Russian distributors of photograhic equipment, Mashpriborintorg. The logo reads "SPECIAL EDITION" and "MADE IN RUSSIA" is molded into the bottom of the plastic body. This is a post-Soviet camera.

I have three examples of this camera. Two of them were bought from a camera shop in Brooklyn where they were "new-old stock" (last two photos). They came with a standard Helios-44M-4 and Helios 44m-6 lenses . The camera pictured for the most part also came from the USA and arrived with a MIR-1B wide angle lens.