LOMO Kometa1960

History

The Kometa was introduced in 1960 at LOMO in Leningrad as part of the Soviet effort to provide accessible medium-format photography to a domestic audience. By 1960, the 6x6 folding format had been established for decades by German manufacturers, and the Soviet industry had been producing its own folding medium-format cameras since the late 1940s - including the Moskva series (based on the Zeiss Super Ikonta) and the Iskra (an original LOMO design).

The Kometa represents a mid-tier folding design: more capable than the simplest Soviet folders, but without the rangefinder coupling or more complex lens and shutter arrangements found on the Iskra or the better Moskva variants. It is targeted at the general domestic photography market rather than the professional or advanced-amateur segment.

Production details for the Kometa are poorly documented in Western sources. The camera appears to have been produced through the early-to-mid 1960s, with the decline of Soviet folding medium-format production mirroring broader global trends as SLR designs and simpler viewfinder cameras displaced the folding format through the 1960s.

Why It Matters

The Kometa is representative of the Soviet medium-format folder as a category: competent Tessar-type optics, a reasonable shutter speed range, and the practical advantage of the folding design making it genuinely pocketable (or at least coat-pocketable) when closed. For shooters interested in 6x6 medium format without the expense of a Hasselblad, Rolleiflex, or Mamiya, Soviet folders like the Kometa offer access to the format at a fraction of the cost.

The 6x6 square negative has inherent compositional advantages - no need to decide orientation, equal flexibility for portrait or landscape cropping - that a camera like the Kometa delivers without any of the automation or convenience of later medium-format designs. Every frame requires deliberate exposure calculation and focus estimation, making it a camera that demands attentive working practice.

The T-22 Tessar copy is not a high-performance lens by modern standards, but Soviet Tessar derivatives at small apertures are generally capable of producing sharp, contrasty negatives adequate for prints at 8x10 inches and larger when the lens and camera are in clean working condition.

Sample Photographers / Notable Use

• Used within Soviet domestic photography in the early-to-mid 1960s as an affordable medium-format option.
• The Kometa and its Soviet folder contemporaries were primarily domestic market products with minimal export and no significant documented presence in Western photographic literature.
• Soviet folding medium-format cameras as a category have attracted growing collector interest from the 2000s onward as the cost of Western medium-format alternatives has increased.

References

• Camera-Wiki: Kometa - production notes and specification data