R
ruben
Guest
DISCLAIMER:
the folloing erratic thoughts are written by a rather non-knowledgeable hobbyst, and are to be regarded as pure gossip only and not followed in any case unless you deliberatedly want to destroy your camera
A week ago my smoothest winding Kiev, a 4AM model 84, went out of rangefinder alignment, due the "worm" arm jumping over the leading pin. The re-alignment took me some 50 working hours, in which I had to go over and over the Kiev Survival Site, for the hard alignment case there detailed. The good news is that once again the KSS prooved reliable, in a rather hazardous and dangerous looking surgery.
I will note that I am not so sure if the Kiev camera is so great, enabling separated alignments for short and long distance, or it is the KSS which in contrast to any other site, goes in so fine detail, full of pics, changing the status of our Kievs into the most privileged cameras in this respect. Fantastic.
And now to the winding issue, which I am following since I joined RFF, with many explosive collusions and some nice 'raprochments'.
Take into consideration that to start with I had a new-like camera, never opened by me, which by luck turned to be my softest winding one, followed closely by a Fedka 2A model 56. Given the condition of the camera I decided from the day I got it that this one I am not touching for inner explorations.
But since I had to go into rather deep dis-assembling for the rangefinder problem I saw and did some things for the winding comfort. How a soft winding 84 model looks like inside ? With some dry grease, not stone dry yet. So the mechanism was working on the basis of this grease condition filling the gaps.
Since all optical parts were taken apart, I went to spry thinner on all gears. Thinner may be perhaps the ultimative cleaner as it not only disolves but evaporates. So I spryied and wond, srpryied and wond for many times until the old grease was over. Then I waited for all gears to dry.
Now it is of my highest interest to note that without any kind of grease, and the camera dry, the winding although remaining in the soft cathegory, was a kind of "crok" "crok" "crok", i.e. you clearly feel this is not a piece of old German engineering. I mean that a perfectly clean but ungreased new Kiev, works worse than a badly old-grease-ed one. Hence my old idea that this mechanism must be literally floating within some smoothening material, paying the tax of attracting more dirt and requiring starting all over again.
This time I applyied high quality grease for anything that mooves or frictions, no matter how related it may be. Generous amounts of grease, winding and applying, winding and applying and LOOKING for other mooving parts not already noticed, to grease them too. This part took me some two hours since as long as you look, the more gears you will discover.
The end result is a more softer camera than the one I got. But....
Based on a someone's posting about quieting a Fed, and based on a quiet Fed I got from Oleg accordingly, it is my assumption that cleaning and greasing is half of the story. The other half, I am assuming, is DIS TENSIONING the shutter curtains spring up to the only necessary tension. The assumption is that for reasons of sloppy margins of safety, unprecission, further fixings, etc etc, FSU cameras arrive to our hands overtensioned.
Of course this stage is well beyond my league, since it involves knowledge of synchronizing the curtains, and building a device to check the speeds. Too high for me.
Cheers,
Ruben
PS
Now what is the purpose I pursue in this old going thriller ? I would say there are two. The practical one is to have a kiev you can easily wind AT EYE LEVEL, WITHOUT LOOSING SIGHT OF YOUR SUBJECT, and as easy as possible. This I have achieved.
The snobby one is "the Contax feeling", in exchange of much less money. Quite crazy, not ?
And perhaps there is a subtle third one, perhaps the Kievs as they are, the raw Kievs, somehow mirror our life by their apparent potential and actual shortcommings. A situation not easy to accept by our perfectionist minds.
PS II
As for the Kiev Survival Site I would like to confess that I don't necessarily follow each step to the full presentation. Thus for example I performed the worm alignment without full separation of the shutter mechanism from the camera (which i still don't dare to do until the issue of some prompt to fall pin is further clarified. In other instances I have taken translation creativity for using what I have available and what I believe better fit to my small overall understanding.
But no doubt that without the KSS I would never be able to go as far as I have, whatever this distance is. Kudos for Russ Pinchbeck !
And still more is to be added. In principle, Russ has changed the status of the Kievs. Obviously he cannot command half a million consumers to buy Kiev rangefinders. But after having written his pedagogical master piece, the fault is not any more at the Kievs but that of the consummers.
the folloing erratic thoughts are written by a rather non-knowledgeable hobbyst, and are to be regarded as pure gossip only and not followed in any case unless you deliberatedly want to destroy your camera
A week ago my smoothest winding Kiev, a 4AM model 84, went out of rangefinder alignment, due the "worm" arm jumping over the leading pin. The re-alignment took me some 50 working hours, in which I had to go over and over the Kiev Survival Site, for the hard alignment case there detailed. The good news is that once again the KSS prooved reliable, in a rather hazardous and dangerous looking surgery.
I will note that I am not so sure if the Kiev camera is so great, enabling separated alignments for short and long distance, or it is the KSS which in contrast to any other site, goes in so fine detail, full of pics, changing the status of our Kievs into the most privileged cameras in this respect. Fantastic.
And now to the winding issue, which I am following since I joined RFF, with many explosive collusions and some nice 'raprochments'.
Take into consideration that to start with I had a new-like camera, never opened by me, which by luck turned to be my softest winding one, followed closely by a Fedka 2A model 56. Given the condition of the camera I decided from the day I got it that this one I am not touching for inner explorations.
But since I had to go into rather deep dis-assembling for the rangefinder problem I saw and did some things for the winding comfort. How a soft winding 84 model looks like inside ? With some dry grease, not stone dry yet. So the mechanism was working on the basis of this grease condition filling the gaps.
Since all optical parts were taken apart, I went to spry thinner on all gears. Thinner may be perhaps the ultimative cleaner as it not only disolves but evaporates. So I spryied and wond, srpryied and wond for many times until the old grease was over. Then I waited for all gears to dry.
Now it is of my highest interest to note that without any kind of grease, and the camera dry, the winding although remaining in the soft cathegory, was a kind of "crok" "crok" "crok", i.e. you clearly feel this is not a piece of old German engineering. I mean that a perfectly clean but ungreased new Kiev, works worse than a badly old-grease-ed one. Hence my old idea that this mechanism must be literally floating within some smoothening material, paying the tax of attracting more dirt and requiring starting all over again.
This time I applyied high quality grease for anything that mooves or frictions, no matter how related it may be. Generous amounts of grease, winding and applying, winding and applying and LOOKING for other mooving parts not already noticed, to grease them too. This part took me some two hours since as long as you look, the more gears you will discover.
The end result is a more softer camera than the one I got. But....
Based on a someone's posting about quieting a Fed, and based on a quiet Fed I got from Oleg accordingly, it is my assumption that cleaning and greasing is half of the story. The other half, I am assuming, is DIS TENSIONING the shutter curtains spring up to the only necessary tension. The assumption is that for reasons of sloppy margins of safety, unprecission, further fixings, etc etc, FSU cameras arrive to our hands overtensioned.
Of course this stage is well beyond my league, since it involves knowledge of synchronizing the curtains, and building a device to check the speeds. Too high for me.
Cheers,
Ruben
PS
Now what is the purpose I pursue in this old going thriller ? I would say there are two. The practical one is to have a kiev you can easily wind AT EYE LEVEL, WITHOUT LOOSING SIGHT OF YOUR SUBJECT, and as easy as possible. This I have achieved.
The snobby one is "the Contax feeling", in exchange of much less money. Quite crazy, not ?
And perhaps there is a subtle third one, perhaps the Kievs as they are, the raw Kievs, somehow mirror our life by their apparent potential and actual shortcommings. A situation not easy to accept by our perfectionist minds.
PS II
As for the Kiev Survival Site I would like to confess that I don't necessarily follow each step to the full presentation. Thus for example I performed the worm alignment without full separation of the shutter mechanism from the camera (which i still don't dare to do until the issue of some prompt to fall pin is further clarified. In other instances I have taken translation creativity for using what I have available and what I believe better fit to my small overall understanding.
But no doubt that without the KSS I would never be able to go as far as I have, whatever this distance is. Kudos for Russ Pinchbeck !
And still more is to be added. In principle, Russ has changed the status of the Kievs. Obviously he cannot command half a million consumers to buy Kiev rangefinders. But after having written his pedagogical master piece, the fault is not any more at the Kievs but that of the consummers.
Last edited by a moderator:
