Two HELIOS lenses from different factories

[pentaxpete]

I have been trying some of my 'Commie Lenses' to see how they perform on my digital Pentax K10D and as I have three Russian Zeniths with the 58mm f2 Helios I saw there was one with Green markings and the others had White markings-- I was told on a Pentax Forum they come from different factories according to the 'Logos' on them -- I could not see any quality difference with my samples.

KMZ (Krasnogorskiy Mechanicheskiy Zavod, or the Krasnogorsk Mechanical Plant), lately also "Krasnogorsky Zavod JSC", is the big boy among the Soviet camera manufacturers. It was the largest in the Soviet Union and created such product lines like the Zorkis, Zenits, Horizons and Moskvas.
KMZ's logo is a stylized Dove prism with a light ray passing through. In Krasnogorsk it was nicknamed the "tombstone". The logo is found on almost all KMZ products. The first version has no light ray, and was used on the FED-Zorki until around 1950. The second version was used for thirty years thereafter and is the most common. The third seems to have been adopted in the late 1970's, and is still in use. Dove prisms are named after the optician who invented them; not after the shape of the light ray, as I used to think. (Compare the "gull wing".)

GREEN Markings

Valdai: Valdai Optical-Mechanical Factory Valdai (may be currently known as Valdayskaya) is located about 250 miles NW of Moscow. Very little is known of this plant, but it has been a prolific producer of lenses for KMZ, and Zenit BelOMO. The SLR lenses bear the Helios name, and this plant has also produced many accessory lenses for RF cameras. For many years, this plant confused collectors, who dubbed it "Shishkebab Factory".