black bodies

I've seen some on Ebay that are obviously painted (visible brushstrokes). I've even seen some that I think were 'restored' with a black marker. But I couldn't resist and just bought this one. It looked convincing and I didn't pay much more than for an ordinary Fed 5. I'm very curious to see it in person. It will probably be another 10 days before it gets here.
 
The paint on my Kiev 4a looks factory done. However, it is probably a repaint job. Either way, its done very very well, and looks as good as anything that would have come out of a factory. It also had new covering, as was cleaned up nice. I think I paid just slightly more than the going rate for the camera/lens combination. I was surprised at the quality of the shots I got with it.
 
Of all the Zorki/FED/Kiev RFs with exchangeable lenses, I think the only one that came black from the factory is the FED 5 - a German mail-order photo shop (Foto Brenner) offers them (sometimes w/ brown leather) - and they are too large-scale to sell repainted cameras.
BTW, I have a very nice black Kiev 4a from alex-photo (Ebay), looks really good, but definitely not an original factory paint-job.
 
I think it's an original late-series FED, not refinished. Cameras with the protective cover for the hot shoe are usually factory mint or nearly so. If it came with a black imitation leather case, that's another sign that it was produced late in the FED 5 series timespan.

Basically there's no money in refinishing FED 5s.
 
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