Are Kievs actually cameras?

Both my "Good" Kievs have worked flawlessly for the 15 years or so that I have owned them.

In interest of complete disclosure, there are three others in various stages of disrepair for about the same length of time. :p
 
I have 3 Kievs all model 4, 1 metered and 2 unmetered. They all work fine, except for the slightly uneven frame spacing which they all suffer from. They seem much more sturdy and reliable than my FEDs and Zorkis. Even the selenium meter is spot on.
 
Had to add this shot of a "good" Kiev. (With it's "manly" leather strap.)

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...and to add this quote from a noted Contax expert,

"Kievs are not Russian cameras; they are German cameras made in Russia."
 
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I had a Kiev 60 for a few years. Even after I sent it for repair, the frame spacing was never right. I still have a Kiev 19m (35mm SLR with Nikon mount). Its fine.
 
The quote was from Peter Hennig, a well known Contax/Kiev expert, photographer, and repairman. (Go ahead, Google him.) His works include articles published in the Journal of the Zeiss Historica Society. He writes: "The information in this article are from my own long experience in using and repairing Contax and Kiev cameras.

Here is some of what he had to say, plus the corrected quote, "
Most Zeiss Contax II/III enthusiasts are familiar with the Soviet Union's Contax copy, the Kiev. However, accurate Kiev information has not been widely available in the West. In most cases, Kiev cameras have been neglected as a Soviet plagiarism of low quality. Even interest in finding out what kind of camera the Kiev really is has been limited, in part because of Cold War stereotypes.

The true nature of the Kiev was pointed out in a very expressive way by a seller of Russian cameras in Sweden, right after the fall of the Soviet Union: “This is not a Soviet camera - it is a German camera, made in the Soviet Union” As a matter of fact, by these few words, he stated the essence of the origin of this camera. The Kiev camera is no plagiarism at all, but a legal replica of the Contax camera, made in the Soviet republic of Ukraine. You could say that, in some respects, the Kiev camera belongs more to the Zeiss hemisphere, than to the Russian one."
 
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newspaperguy said:
Had to add this shot of a "good" Kiev. (With it's "manly" leather strap.)

med_U20714I1282259934.SEQ.0.jpg


...and to add this quote from a noted Contax expert,

"Kievs are not Russian cameras; they are German cameras made in Russia."
Click to expand...
Oh bona! Just the thing for a butch omi to have dangling against his chest riah, as he sits in just his kaffies, bulging thews astride his horse.

Putin would love it.
 
The reliability of Kiev's is spotty. Many of them, if not most, need to be serviced before serious use. (I've owned and used several of them by the way.)

The Contax IIa or IIIa is a much better choice (if Contax lenses are desired) in my view, but some of them will require work as well. They usually stay fixed when fixed however and they never leak light. Any good local camera tech can fix a Kiev or a Contax (the post-war models are easier to service) at reasonable cost - no need to send any of them to expensive Contax specialists.
 
" Vince " From a few of those pics, could I guess you know your way around a kitchen?
( One of my favorite places in the winter.) Peter
 
I'ts fun

I'ts fun

I guess that the fun with fsu cameras is that you have to service and tweak them in order to get a good camera. I'ts rewarding in some way to shoot with a camera you had spread out all over the table. Kind of photographic meccano.
In my experience the kiev's are the worst.
 
Have 2 Kiev 60's. One 6x6, the other 6x4.5. They are what got me back into film. Can't say I have had any issues with them. They could have been better and smelled a bit "off" when I got them but that passed. The prism is usable but just that. On the other hand I still like some lenses so much I still use them on the Mamiya 645. The shift one in particular is a joy to use compare to the Mamiya one.
 
Just got my first roll back from my Kiev 4 and with the exception of some erratic frame spacing (but no overlaps) it seems to work fine ! :)

So it definitely IS a camera. :p

Ronnie
 
knopare said:
I guess that the fun with fsu cameras is that you have to service and tweak them in order to get a good camera. I'ts rewarding in some way to shoot with a camera you had spread out all over the table. Kind of photographic meccano.
In my experience the kiev's are the worst.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, well, my take on it is that people who service and tweak cameras are what messes them up in the first place.

To work on a camera you need a proper set of tools, which few people have, spare parts waiting to go in and the experience of a proper apprenticeship in a proper workshop or camera factory.

Just look at the mess they make trying to remove something without a peg spanner, and there's those scratched lenses...

Regards, David
 
It has always been better to have some all mechanic camera that upon failure could be fixed even by yourself, that a complex one that once it fails the most optimistic outlook would be a trip down the dustbin.
That is the awesomeness of the fsu cameras.
 
I've purchased my first rf Kiev (a 1968-made 4A) back in 1975: it always worked well and still does, after decades of rolls and rolls of film passed behind its shutter.

10 years ago I've given it to a repairman, just to check the shutter's accuracy and some cleaning. He was surprised to see how well-made was its inside.

It's a perfectly built and finished piece.

I admit that any ex-Soviet camera could suffer of inaccurate quality control, but a mechanical camera can be repaired by any skilled technician.

I have other Kievs too: one of them is the evidence of a work done by a drunken, ignorant man.

E.L.
 
When Soviet Union collapsed, there was a rush of items sold to west, Finland being the nearest. You could buy Kievs 20 dollars per kilo. That was about three bodies. I bought 10 of them, got a contax repair manual from ebay and dismantled them. Quite an experience. Some of themm didn`t work at all, broken shutter tapes etc. one was particularly good. even the serial number indicated it to be somewhere 1948, our technican here in helsinki said it was from german made parts as the shutter assembly had a serial number 240.
That I used a while... Also when visiting Prague, "The capital of pickpockets"... I made a test: When visiting the restrom in a beer pub, I left the "kiev" on the table. When coming back, the camera was still there. Nobody thought it worth even stealing...
 
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