Facts

• This camera was a gift from a friend at my university. He's also really into film photography and knows so much about it! He taught me some photo theory, and we went on walks together, taking photos with this camera. We used a light meter app on the phone, since the camera doesn't have one.
• To simplify exposure settings,

  each shutter speed is marked with a weather symbol

  , and each aperture value corresponds to a film ISO rating. This allows even a beginner — without a light meter or experience — to roughly match the exposure to lighting conditions (though not always optimally).

• The distance scale includes not only meters

  (and feet, for export models), but also helpful pictograms:

  "Portrait", "Group Portrait", and "Landscape".

• Focusing using only the distance markers on the lens is really hard! More than half of my photos ended up out of focus.
• Retail price in the Soviet era:

  23 rubles.

• The Smena-Simvol was used by Soviet mountaineers during the

  1982 Everest expedition.

  The camera returned from the climb in working condition and is now preserved in the Polytechnical Museum in Moscow.