fidget
Lemon magnet
Hi Ming,
there are several discussions on this forum about the causes and cure for the infamous frame spacing issues. I don't mean to open another discussion here. This is just my view of the problems (which, as I mentioned "did-it-for-me") with Kievs
To be fair, there is more than one issue here. The first and possibly less problematic is the close and varying frame spacing. Whilst some have had very widely spaced frames and even some which vary, mine stayed the same on each cam. They were all close, even touching each other, but did not vary along the film, UNLESS they began to overlap (30 -50%). Many experienced this when running films past the 24th frame, although I had it come and go in the middle of a 36 frame film.
Anyway, not to go on too long: I looked at this for hours, winding on, watching it, marking a film through the lens mount and rewinding, winding on.... I could never get it to fail unless I messed up the winding (cocking).
Now you will have felt that the cocking of the Kiev 4 feels quite hard and can feel ..er...lumpy now and then. You may also have found that (unless you have selected the slowest speeds) even a partial cocking can allow the shutter to work with the expected speed, but subsequent cockings can result in an incomplete cocking (the shutter gets out of sync somehow). So, I came to the conclusion that, at least on my Kievs, the overlapping frame issue was due to an (or series of) incomplete cocking of the shutter, they are turned into a series of incomplete winds because once the cocking is messed up, the following few will be too. It is easy to miss what has happened.
This is just my take on it, lots of issues have been seen with different spools etc so there well may be much more to this really irritating "feature".
Incidentally, only since I'd had it with Kievs, I started winding my own bulk load film so 24s or whatever would have been easily possible. Ah well, too late now!
Just my opinion of course and now I have no Kievs to play with.
there are several discussions on this forum about the causes and cure for the infamous frame spacing issues. I don't mean to open another discussion here. This is just my view of the problems (which, as I mentioned "did-it-for-me") with Kievs
To be fair, there is more than one issue here. The first and possibly less problematic is the close and varying frame spacing. Whilst some have had very widely spaced frames and even some which vary, mine stayed the same on each cam. They were all close, even touching each other, but did not vary along the film, UNLESS they began to overlap (30 -50%). Many experienced this when running films past the 24th frame, although I had it come and go in the middle of a 36 frame film.
Anyway, not to go on too long: I looked at this for hours, winding on, watching it, marking a film through the lens mount and rewinding, winding on.... I could never get it to fail unless I messed up the winding (cocking).
Now you will have felt that the cocking of the Kiev 4 feels quite hard and can feel ..er...lumpy now and then. You may also have found that (unless you have selected the slowest speeds) even a partial cocking can allow the shutter to work with the expected speed, but subsequent cockings can result in an incomplete cocking (the shutter gets out of sync somehow). So, I came to the conclusion that, at least on my Kievs, the overlapping frame issue was due to an (or series of) incomplete cocking of the shutter, they are turned into a series of incomplete winds because once the cocking is messed up, the following few will be too. It is easy to miss what has happened.
This is just my take on it, lots of issues have been seen with different spools etc so there well may be much more to this really irritating "feature".
Incidentally, only since I'd had it with Kievs, I started winding my own bulk load film so 24s or whatever would have been easily possible. Ah well, too late now!
Just my opinion of course and now I have no Kievs to play with.
Last edited:
colyn
ישו משיח
I solved the winding frame spacing on my 4a's by removing the clutch spring and washers and soaking them in solvent. While they were soaking I cleaned the other take-up parts such as the fork with a Q-tip soaked in solvent.
Do not grease the parts during re-assembly.
Haven't had a problem since.
Do not grease the parts during re-assembly.
Haven't had a problem since.