The Leningrad 7 (model number YU101) is one of the many USSR-made selenium exposure meters, meaning that they do not need any batteries since selenium is able to generate an electric current which depends on the amount of light available. Mine was made in August 1981 and sold on 17 May 1982 (serial number 0400XX, price printed onto the back of the meter and into the passport was 20 roubles) and I bought it in December 2005 for USD 20 plus shipping. It came with leather bag, cord, (Russian) manual, passport, and an opal plastic piece which can be snapped onto the selenium cell for incident light metering.
The Leningrad 7 is made mainly from plastic and is therefore very light (much lighter than my Weston Master V) but unfortunately also doesn't make a very rugged impression. It is almost a mystery how to operate it (try to change the film speed!) but thanks to Alfred Klomp's Leningrad 7 page and a Leningrad 4 manual which I found on the Internet I managed to use it finally.
The Leningrad 7 has three scales, one more than usual. This has the advantage that you can read off the values a bit more precisely than with most other meters, but the downside is that it requires much more fiddling around. The black lever on the top left of the meter is used to switch between the low light scale from 1 (all the values on the Leningrad 7 are equivalent to the same exposure value or EV when using 100 ASA film) to 5 (lever pushed away from the user) and the high light scale from 12 to 18 (lever pulled towards the user). The medium light scale from 5 to 12 will not give correct readouts when using just this lever -- to be able to use it correctly, you have to pull the lever towards yourself (to obtain the high light scale) and then press down and pull the small black button on the right side of the meter. In other words, it's unfortunately not extremely convenient to use the medium light scale.
Unfortunately the readout cannot be locked -- which means you have to (be able to) look at the scale while reading the values off the scale (this is contrary to my Weston Master V where you have to press down a button in order to meter and as soon as you release it the readout is locked -- I suppose most other meters will be similar). This can make metering quite inconvenient.
My Leningrad 7 has DIN and GOST film speed scales -- there is also the export version with DIN and ASA scales. My meter's scale goes from 6 DIN/2.8 GOST (3 ASA) to 33 DIN/1400 GOST (1600 ASA). So how do you actually set the film speed? By rotating the large transparent dial onto which the aperture scale is printed -- if you look closely this dial has a small knob for this purpose, situated diagonally across the f/5.6 value. The aperture scale goes from 1.4 to 22 (only full stops marked) and the shutter time scale from 1/2000 sec. to 30 sec. (only full stops marked). It doesn't show any cine settings, but if you know the shutter times of your cine camera you can of course still use this meter to set the correct aperture. Unfortunately the manual doesn't tell you the angle of metering which makes metering of specific smaller areas impossible.
The Leningrad 7 is a usable but very simple USSR-made exposure meter. There are some aspects which make its usage more inconvenient than it would have to be. I believe that for the same price there are better developed selenium light meters around, not only USSR-made ones but even Western ones (for instance older Weston Masters). One USSR-made light meter which looks interesting is the Sverdlovsk-4, a CdS (read: battery-dependent) light meter which has cine settings, more detailed scales with 1/3 intermediate steps marked, and a viewfinder to be able exactly to see its 20 degree metering angle. It's available for not much more than the Leningrad 7 -- maybe it would have been a better choice.
Links: