C41
Kodak Portra 400
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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slr-35mm
The Sport (Спорт) is a Soviet 35mm single-lens reflex camera produced by GOMZ (the Leningrad State Optical-Mechanical Plant, later reorganized as KMZ) beginning in 1936. It is widely credited as one of the earliest 35mm SLRs ever mass-produced, developed concurrently with or slightly before the German Ihagee Kine Exakta (1936). The Sport uses a focal-plane cloth shutter, an eye-level reflex viewfinder with a mirror, and a fixed lens - a configuration that anticipated the 35mm SLR architecture that would come to dominate photography by the 1960s. Production was extremely limited and was halted by the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Surviving examples are rare and primarily of collector and museum interest.
Reference
Recommended film stocks for the 35mm format your camera takes.
C41
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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Kodak Tri-X 400 is a classic black-and-white film known for strong tonality, visible grain, and documentary character.
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Kodak Gold 200 is a daylight-balanced C-41 color negative film with warm color, moderate grain, and a classic consumer-film look.
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Before you buy used
About this camera
One of the world's first 35mm SLRs: the 1936 Soviet Sport, a pre-WWII eye-level reflex camera from Leningrad.
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Format | 35mm |
| Mount | Fixed (Industar-type ~50mm f/6.3 or similar) |
| Years | 1936 - ~1941 |
| Shutter | ~1/25s - 1/500s + B, mechanical focal-plane cloth |
| Flash sync | None |
| Meter | None |
| Modes | Manual |
| Weight | ~850 g |
| Battery | None |
| Viewfinder | Eye-level reflex mirror |
Development of the Sport began in Leningrad in the early 1930s under Soviet efforts to establish a domestic precision optics and camera industry. The designer is often credited as Semyon Maslennikov, working at GOMZ. The camera was exhibited publicly around 1934-1935 in prototype form, with series production beginning ~1936. Contemporaneous with the German Kine Exakta, the Sport's priority as "first 35mm SLR" has been debated by historians; some sources give priority to the Soviet Sport on the basis of earlier design documentation, while others favor the Exakta based on commercial availability dates. The actual production run of the Sport was very small - estimates suggest only a few thousand units at most across the entire production lifetime. Manufacturing was disrupted by the German blockade of Leningrad (1941-1944); the GOMZ factory was converted to war production and Sport camera manufacturing never resumed. After WWII, Soviet SLR development continued at KMZ with entirely new designs.
The Sport's historical significance is outsized relative to its tiny production run. As one of the first 35mm cameras with a reflex viewing system at eye level, it prefigured the SLR format that became the global standard for professional and serious amateur photography by the 1960s. Its existence demonstrates that the SLR concept was developed independently and near-simultaneously in both the Soviet Union and Germany in the mid-1930s, a fact that complicates simple Western-centric narratives about the history of camera design. The Sport is also notable for its unusual film loading - it uses a proprietary cartridge rather than standard 35mm cassettes, which means shooting with one today requires either modifying standard film or sourcing period-correct cartridges.
For collectors, a functional Sport in good condition is an extremely rare find, and museum-quality examples command high prices at specialist auctions. The camera appears in major collections including those at Polytechnic Museum Moscow and several European camera history institutions.
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Ilford HP5 Plus is a flexible ISO 400 black-and-white film with classic grain and strong push-processing tolerance.
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Kodak Ektar 100 is a fine-grain C-41 color negative film with saturated color and high sharpness.
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