[Leica] st. Petersburg

[deveney.marty at saugov.sa.gov.au (Deveney, Marty (PIRSA))]

I was in St Petersburg in July and August.  The place previously mentioned
on Nevsky Prospekt had a good selection of a lot of Soviet camera gear, but
I think Fedka and similar dealers that CLA the cameras at CIS rates and then
on-sell them are generally a safer bet.  I looked at a lot of cameras and
lenses in Russia and didn't buy anything because all the lenses I saw that
were mechanically okay had bad coating and the ones with good coating had
wobbly barrels or other mechanical problems.  I'd say a 10:1 ratio of
unuseable to decent wouldn't be out of the realms of reality for the gear
that I saw.  A CLA and proper collimation would probably do wonders for many
of these lenses.  It also seems likely to me that a lot of the good stuff
has already been sold through eBay and other sellers, particularly from big
cities like St P.

I may aswell point out now that some of my photos from that trip are here:
http://gallery.leica-users.org/Russia .  There are a few in there which are
less than technically perfect (or not even good, depending n your criteria)
that I included as a record of the trip or just because of the content.
Comments, lambasting, abuse, etc welcome.

Marty