All my Kiev are Dead!

[ZorkiKat]

The last working one snapped its shutter straps. Five rolls went through it before its shutter croaked. On its last roll, only half of the pictures made it, the rest were fogged or had fog marks....so typical of the Kiev I've used, breaking down without any warning. It was only after rewinding the film that I knew what happened. The shutter had a tapered gap between its blinds.

This is a sign to start fixing some of the dead Kiev- perhaps three of the 7 I have. I've already started testing out the 3mm shutter strap from Aki-Asahi (http://aki-asahi.com/store/html/curtains/shutter-curtain.php ) on a crappy 1976 K-4a.

The Aki-Asahi strap seems to be suitable- it fits snugly through the shutter's strap slits, and doesn't bind. The lower blind slides through very smoothly. The strap doesn't show fraying even after about 100 actuations. Very inexpensive too, at US $6.00 for a 2 metre length, and that includes postage.

Jay

 

[ZorkiKat]

...and here's what the last one did before dying....

...and here's what the last one did before dying....

...that 1964 Kiev-4 was a great machine. Does as great as the Leica M3, but sadly not as reliable.

35mm Jupiter-12:

50mm Jupiter-8:

with 50mm Jupiter-8M and ЖС17 yellow filter:

50mm Jupiter-8M

 

[ZorkiKat]

I can say one thing. Kiev users are tough birds to keep fixing them and using them! 😉

I'll give them just one try. 😀

Jay

 

[newspaperguy]

I think it would be worth it... the pix sure make it look like a keeper.

Love the J-8m effect. Shades of the old world. Nicely done.

 

[kuzano]

If mine broke, I'd probably try fixing it

If mine broke, I'd probably try fixing it

I have a kiev (kneb) bought with previous CLA (supposedly). As long as it shoots like this, I will probably attempt to fix it. Jupiter 8 with clean unmarked glass. Unmolested except for crop. Fujicolor 200:

 

[xayraa33]

with quality shots like that Jay, I would say fixing that Kiev is a must.
certainly that J-8M can be fitted to an other Kiev body if everything else fails, it is most definately worthy of that.

 

[tripod]

If you can fix it yourself a Kiev is certainly worth fixing, but if you have to pay for a shutter repair, a Kiev just doesn't have the inherent (resale) value of a Contax II or III, to make it worthwhile. Unless you are particularly attached to a particular Kiev for sentimental reasons. It's kind of like fixing a Canonet. It may be smarter to just buy a nother one.

 

[Roberto]

Please do repair them!

Please do repair them!

Comrade, you have to... please.

Let me post some pictures I made with my Kievs..

 

[le vrai rdu]

my kiev broke a ribbon, just after the last shoot of the film (such a gentleman my kiev 🙂 ), I bought everything to repair it, just waiting for my brother to come and sew the ribbons, as a future medic, he knows better than I how to do it. I hope it will work

 

[ruben]

I'll give them just one try. 😀

Jay

No Jay.

Let's face the truth. With the Kievs you have lost faith, patience, and will. Being the Kiev disassembly what it really takes, I don't think you will survive more than 2 hours work.

It doesn't fit.

Kievs are kids demmanding very high attention, love, patience, and specially time. Chances are that if this is your first Kiev disassembly you will not be doing all the necessary jobs to make sure this will be your last.

And on the other hand, supposing you get a sudden attack of Kiev fixing and succeed indeed in making a Super Kiev - where this will leave you ?

Be practical, sell the cameras for parts, or donate them. Why remove firm grounds ?

Cheers,
Ruben

PS,
Oh, I forgot, in your final tryial to proove the Kievs are trashable, don't be tempted to buy the original Arsenal ribbons sold by Alex photo goods (why to pay cheaper and get better ?) but make tryials with Aki Asahi ribbons, already rejected by the Kiev Survival Site. Since the Kievs don't work from birth, why not experimenting beyond ?


:angel: :angel: :angel:

 

[ruben]

my kiev broke a ribbon, just after the last shoot of the film (such a gentleman my kiev 🙂 ), I bought everything to repair it, just waiting for my brother to come and sew the ribbons, as a future medic, he knows better than I how to do it. I hope it will work

Just to be sure it doesn't happen again soon: Is your Kiev clean and lubricated ?

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[ZorkiKat]

No Jay.

Let's face the truth. With the Kievs you have lost faith, patience, and will. Being the Kiev disassembly what it really takes, I don't think you will survive more than 2 hours work.

It doesn't fit.

Kievs are kids demmanding very high attention, love, patience, and specially time. Chances are that if this is your first Kiev disassembly you will not be doing all the necessary jobs to make sure this will be your last.

And on the other hand, supposing you get a sudden attack of Kiev fixing and succeed indeed in making a Super Kiev - where this will leave you ?

Be practical, sell the cameras for parts, or donate them. Why remove firm grounds ?

Cheers,
Ruben

PS,
Oh, I forgot, in your final tryial to proove the Kievs are trashable, don't be tempted to buy the original Arsenal ribbons sold by Alex photo goods (why to pay cheaper and get better ?) but make tryials with Aki Asahi ribbons, already rejected by the Kiev Survival Site. Since the Kievs don't work from birth, why not experimenting beyond ?


:angel: :angel: :angel:

Not quite, Ruben. I've already spent about 3 hours fitting the straps to my 'test shutter' (1 hour of this spent threading the ribbons through the drums ends and blinds). 🙂

The current attempt in getting into Kiev isn't the first one. I've been taking them apart before I even worked on my first FED restoration project. That was around 2001 or 2002. I've taken the shutter module out, cleaned the mechanism, adjusted rangefinders, and even fixed irregular frame spacing (how this was done, I couldn't figure out but the spacing problems was gone after the reassembling the camera).

The references I've been using then was Rick Oleson's materials (he even sent me some extra diagrams) and Maizenberg's Russian camera repair book. Rick's info filled in the missing details from Maizenberg.

The Kiev Survival Site has great info as well. I could not find- perhaps I missed it- the part there where Aki-Asahi ribbons are rejected specifically. Can you lead me to that page where it says so?

The AA ribbons are not of the 'craftstore' variety. They are thin, extremely supple, and very tough. Seems to be made of natural silk (it doesn't melt when subjected to flame as synthetics do). They look similar to the straps used in Leica-type shutters, and appear to be thinner too. Like the Arsenal stuff, it also woven, but finer. The ribbon's surface is so smooth that the Kiev blind's eyelet slits literally glide over it. No stress or tension -nor pinching, as with the 'craftstore varieties'- appear to happen as the blind slides down.

My 'test shutter' (assembled just to see how the AA ribbon works with it) has been subjected to another 150+ actuations since my last post. Still no signs of fraying. The tension hasn't been set high and yet the blinds are able to move easily, unlike with the craftstore straps I tried before. It appears to work. Years ago, before the 'Arsenal' ribbons appeared on eBay, various substitutes have been suggested. Rick Oleson suggested acetate ribbons. Bob Shell used Pentax straps.

Nor am I trying to prove that Kiev are 'trashable'. What I'm trying to see is if Kiev can be made as reliable as my humble low-tech FED or Zorki by eliminating their habits of breaking down unexpectedly, when least wanted. This is what they have to prove to me. :angel: Having Kiev ribbons break midroll when the camera is in use has happened to me several times, the first was with my first Kiev in 1989. This happening several times in a small sample (8 or 9 cameras) is a large statistic. In contrast, straps or shutters breaking in the same situation happened only once with the FED or Zorki- and this is from a large sample of camera bodies.

Jay

 

[ruben]

Hi Jay,
Being that the case, and had I been in your shoes, I would think first where the problems come from.
You have your experience, other people have theirs, and you find yourself in a strange situation that as said, I would think about the reason before any further CLA which consumes some 25 working hours, at least.

I suspect, just out of the blue, that you are translating into the Kievs something you know very well from the technical world of the Feds, that the common folk is not.

 

[zhang xk]

Hi Comrade Jay,

I hope that with the new ribbons that sounds of very good quality, your Kievs could be made reliable. I have a 1951 dual logo Kiev that was ruthlessly used by a movie director from its look and brassing on the winding nob ,but it still has almost intact original ribbons when I openned it.🙂

It maybe just a bad luck that all your Kievs are dead. Perhaps they were made in later years with lower quality standards, or some really old stuffs?

Cheers,

Zhang

 

[ruben]

Not quite, Ruben. I've already spent about 3 hours fitting the straps to my 'test shutter' (1 hour of this spent threading the ribbons through the drums ends and blinds). 🙂

The current attempt in getting into Kiev isn't the first one. I've been taking them apart before I even worked on my first FED restoration project. That was around 2001 or 2002. I've taken the shutter module out, cleaned the mechanism, adjusted rangefinders, and even fixed irregular frame spacing (how this was done, I couldn't figure out but the spacing problems was gone after the reassembling the camera).

The references I've been using then was Rick Oleson's materials (he even sent me some extra diagrams) and Maizenberg's Russian camera repair book. Rick's info filled in the missing details from Maizenberg.

The Kiev Survival Site has great info as well. I could not find- perhaps I missed it- the part there where Aki-Asahi ribbons are rejected specifically. Can you lead me to that page where it says so?

The AA ribbons are not of the 'craftstore' variety. They are thin, extremely supple, and very tough. Seems to be made of natural silk (it doesn't melt when subjected to flame as synthetics do). They look similar to the straps used in Leica-type shutters, and appear to be thinner too. Like the Arsenal stuff, it also woven, but finer. The ribbon's surface is so smooth that the Kiev blind's eyelet slits literally glide over it. No stress or tension -nor pinching, as with the 'craftstore varieties'- appear to happen as the blind slides down.

My 'test shutter' (assembled just to see how the AA ribbon works with it) has been subjected to another 150+ actuations since my last post. Still no signs of fraying. The tension hasn't been set high and yet the blinds are able to move easily, unlike with the craftstore straps I tried before. It appears to work. Years ago, before the 'Arsenal' ribbons appeared on eBay, various substitutes have been suggested. Rick Oleson suggested acetate ribbons. Bob Shell used Pentax straps.

Nor am I trying to prove that Kiev are 'trashable'. What I'm trying to see is if Kiev can be made as reliable as my humble low-tech FED or Zorki by eliminating their habits of breaking down unexpectedly, when least wanted. This is what they have to prove to me. :angel: Having Kiev ribbons break midroll when the camera is in use has happened to me several times, the first was with my first Kiev in 1989. This happening several times in a small sample (8 or 9 cameras) is a large statistic. In contrast, straps or shutters breaking in the same situation happened only once with the FED or Zorki- and this is from a large sample of camera bodies.

Jay

Hi Jay,
since you have shown an exemplary good temperament, in anwering my teasing post without rebuking by the same coin, I cannot but try to be serious again.

I really cannot understand what your problems are with the Kievs. But I can rasise two speculations:

a) After knowing and fixing Feds and Zorkis it cannot be but very understable that dealing with Kievs may be very very enervating for you.

b) Once you CLA a Kiev, it is not a camera for leaving it at the shelf and take out once in a week for moving the buttons as a "maintenance". By this way grease will start to stiffen and your efforts will render no satisfactory results in the long run.

My best wholeheartedly advice is that you invest in fixing and CLAing a Kiev, only in case you are going to give them real daily use and banging. Other folks using Kievs much less, will not be sensitive as you when they have some trouble. But being you a gear minded folk, your efforts will not last unless you intend to use this camera.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[ZorkiKat]

Hi Comrade Jay,

I hope that with the new ribbons that sounds of very good quality, your Kievs could be made reliable. I have a 1951 dual logo Kiev that was ruthlessly used by a movie director from its look and brassing on the winding nob ,but it still has almost intact original ribbons when I openned it.🙂

It maybe just a bad luck that all your Kievs are dead. Perhaps they were made in later years with lower quality standards, or some really old stuffs?

Cheers,

Zhang

Hello Comrade Zhang

The new (Aki-Asahi) ribbons seem to be holding up. It's gone through 500+ actuations already....I had an assistant fire the camera continuously at 1/50 and 1/125 for more than hour. I suspect that he has more wear on his finger from handling the rough (and relatively heavy, compared to other wind knobs of other cameras) Kiev winding knob than the new ribbons themselves.

The test shutter is in a 'scrapped' 1978 Kiev 4a. Its shutter is now working, but it won't be functional since it is missing most of the parts in its winding knob, its entire rewind knob, and the outer glass covers of the rangefinder windows.

I have a 1951 Kiev-2 with block script that is on queue for repair. I would agree that those early cameras are indeed beautiful. I also tend to agree with the quality. That's why I'm limiting the work to cameras made prior to 1970. A couple Kiev-4 from 1976 are so badly made that I think they're best left in the display shelf.

Jay

 

[zhang xk]

Hello Comrade Zhang

The new (Aki-Asahi) ribbons seem to be holding up. It's gone through 500+ actuations already....I had an assistant fire the camera continuously at 1/50 and 1/125 for more than hour. I suspect that he has more wear on his finger from handling the rough (and relatively heavy, compared to other wind knobs of other cameras) Kiev winding knob than the new ribbons themselves.

The test shutter is in a 'scrapped' 1978 Kiev 4a. Its shutter is now working, but it won't be functional since it is missing most of the parts in its winding knob, its entire rewind knob, and the outer glass covers of the rangefinder windows.

I have a 1951 Kiev-2 with block script that is on queue for repair. I would agree that those early cameras are indeed beautiful. I also tend to agree with the quality. That's why I'm limiting the work to cameras made prior to 1970. A couple Kiev-4 from 1976 are so badly made that I think they're best left in the display shelf.

Jay

Hi Jay,

You are so lucky to have someone help fire the camera. Once I repaired a Kiev 88, and since it is such a notoriously un-reliable camera, I fired the shutter more than 1,000 times myself until my fingers are numb.😀 Still I am not sure if it will be dead for the nex shot.:bang: But there are others who used the camera for many years without problem.

Cheers, and good luck.

Zhang

 

[ruben]

Hello Comrade Zhang

The new (Aki-Asahi) ribbons seem to be holding up. It's gone through 500+ actuations already....I had an assistant fire the camera continuously at 1/50 and 1/125 for more than hour. I suspect that he has more wear on his finger from handling the rough (and relatively heavy, compared to other wind knobs of other cameras) Kiev winding knob than the new ribbons themselves.

The test shutter is in a 'scrapped' 1978 Kiev 4a. Its shutter is now working, but it won't be functional since it is missing most of the parts in its winding knob, its entire rewind knob, and the outer glass covers of the rangefinder windows.

......Jay

I don't quite follow you here.

If you are saying that you are trying the non-Arsenal ribbons resistance within a non working Kiev, this is one thing.

But if you are saying that after installing the ribbons on a user camera you will give it to an assistant to wind and fire it 500 continuous times or more - this is a proceeding I will not do unless my name is Henry Scherer.

The reason is very simple one. Henry Scherer disassembles the Contaxes to last detail, cleans and re-assemble them himself to great accuracy. Without this process, your camera will have several parts not fitting the necessary accuracy within themselves to submit it to the 500 continuos lashes of "an assistant".

If there is a camera on earth that I will not punnish this way, its name is Kiev, the Kiev RFs.

If this is the case indeed, instead of testing the reliablitly of your CLA, you may be producing a series of mis-encounters within the gear wheels leading to make the camera prompt to break very soon.

Let me be crystal clear here in what I mean. 500 "lashes" amount to some 14 rolls, an amount of films I have surpassed by far and large. But this is not at all the same as 500 continuous lashes, an Inquisitorial punishment the Kievs are not built for, due to the bigger than usual amount of parts, unless as previously said, you have totally disasembled and reasembled each of their parts to Scherer accuracy.

And as a side note, Kievs have winding round knobs, instead of levers. Winding with a lever is by nature much more even than with a round knob.

My winding knobs are soft like ice cream, but I never wind wildly. I am delicate to my Kiev users and they correspond me with their best.

Cheers,
Ruben

PS
a) "All my Kiev are Dead!" - Jay

b) "I suspect, just out of the blue, that you are translating into the Kievs something you know very well from the technical world of the Feds" - Ruben

 

[ZorkiKat]

Hi Jay,

You are so lucky to have someone help fire the camera. Once I repaired a Kiev 88, and since it is such a notoriously un-reliable camera, I fired the shutter more than 1,000 times myself until my fingers are numb.😀 Still I am not sure if it will be dead for the nex shot.:bang: But there are others who used the camera for many years without problem.

Cheers, and good luck.

Zhang

Comrade Zhang

My assistant had nothing to do for most of the afternoon...no scheduled shoots, so I asked him to fire the shutter casually whilst watching TV 😀 The 500 or so actuations is really an estimate. At the rate of about 4-6 winding and firing sequences per minute, he stopped just about midway through the second feature in HBO. 🙂

This procedure - firing the shutter continously at a steady, gentle rate- is a modification of one tip Rick Oleson suggested to me a few years ago- that is to exercise and break-in ribbons through a hundred or so firings.

I know what you mean with Kiev 88. Their knobs are notoriously heavy to turn.
What did you do to your K-88? A friend used to do wonders with this camera. We even replaced the original steel-foil shutters with the DIY shutter cloth I used for FED and Zorki. We've been told that it wouldn't work. 7 years later, these modified Kiev 88 shutters still work.

Jay

Jay

 

[ZorkiKat]

I don't quite follow you here.

If you are saying that you are trying the non-Arsenal ribbons resistance within a non working Kiev, this is one thing.

But if you are saying that after installing the ribbons on a user camera you will give it to an assistant to wind and fire it 500 continuous times or more - this is a proceeding I will not do unless my name is Henry Scherer.

The reason is very simple one. Henry Scherer disassembles the Contaxes to last detail, cleans and re-assemble them himself to great accuracy. Without this process, your camera will have several parts not fitting the necessary accuracy within themselves to submit it to the 500 continuos lashes of "an assistant".

If there is a camera on earth that I will not punnish this way, its name is Kiev.

If this is the case indeed, instead of testing the reliablitly of your CLA, you may be producing a series of mis-encounters within the gear wheels leading to make the camera prompt to break very soon.

Let me be crystal clear here in what I mean. 500 "lashes" amount to some 14 rolls, an amount of films I have surpassed by far and large. But this is not at all the same as 500 continuous lashes, an Inquisitorial punishment the Kievs are not built for, due to the bigger than usual amount of parts, unless as previously said, you have totally disasembled and reasembled each of their parts to Scherer accuracy.

And as a side note, Kievs have winding round knobs, instead of levers. Winding with a lever is by nature much more even than with a round knob.

My winding knobs are soft like ice cream, but I never wind wildly. I am delicate to my Kiev users and they correspond me with their best.

Cheers,
Ruben

Ruben

If you noted the 2nd paragraph of my post which you quoted, it says "test shutter". In fact, the only shutter I've been referring to since I mentioned the installation of the AA strap. The camera which the strap is in cannot even be classified as a "user camera", In that same post, same paragraph, I described the camera to be missing some critical parts needed for it to be even barely functional.

And if it hasn't been obvious to you yet, the point here has been is to test the suitability of the AA ribbons for Kiev shutters. You mention that it was "trashed" at the Kiev Survival site, yet I could not find any such reference there. I have reason to believe that you have no notion of what sort of material the AA ribbons are. You must have equated this to be the same as the ordinary dime-store craft material. :angel:

You also missed the point of the site's author, that despite strongly advocating the use of the Arsenal material, he remains open to finding suitable substitutes. At least that is how my impression is, in the "Ribbons Revisited" addendum of the shutter ribbon replacement chapter. The author said:

"So I bought the entire roll and brought it home with the hopes of that I had found a cheap ribbon alternative that I could share with everyone... Back to searching for the easily available and cheap ribbon..."

And how is it that you see the testing procedure I made to be a sort of torture?
4 to 6 winding and firing cycles per minute isn't exactly quick or straining for
what is supposed to be a precision machine. That's about the normal winding and firing rate when these cameras are in use. And when proving materials, isn't it an acceptable method to fast track the actions involved in the operation? As far as I know, almost every item- from keyboards and TV remote controls, to doorknobs and office chair swivels- is tested this way.

And can you suggest a more ritually acceptable way to test an unknown, albeit promising material like the AA ribbon, without going though this "torture"? By leaving it as is and see if it would survive the 14 th roll?

FYI, this was how I tested my DIY shutter cloth and ribbon material for cloth focal plane shutters. The first FED I repaired which used these materials were subjected to similar tests. The cloth shutter held up, and more than 30 cameras later attest to this. That FED still works fine, and gives consistent exposures. You may think it unfair to compare a FED with a Kiev- the FED has less parts and a simpler mechanism. The former's simplicity is its strongest point.


Winding knobs on Kiev, are by nature, relatively heavier than similar parts on other cameras. Physics would dictate this- there are more parts which this knob has to pull and more functions to do. In contrast, the winding knobs in other cameras only pull a relatively simple set of gears set in a more or less straight path. Even the best made knob on a Kiev can never be as light as a well-made winding knob on the 'other' camera.


Jay