Kiev 4 shutter tension -- HELP

[Fricetix]

Hi guys.

I'm David, almost 17y old photography lover from Croatia.
I recently bought a Kiev 4 (1970) with J8M 50mm F2 for street photography and it works almost great (I haven't tried it with any film yet).
Meter isn't working but that's OK. The bigger problem is it's sound.
I understand that on slower speeds it has that louder whizzing sound and that's great but from 1/125 to 1/1250 it's really loud. So, I was reading a little and I figured I should readjust the shutter tension. But how?
I was looking around KSS and I don't know if that can be done without removing the whole shutter assembly from camera.

I measured the shutter speeds with my Fujifilm HS10 digital camera. It can record up to 1000fps so I recorded videos of the releasing shutter. After measurement it seems that most speeds are pretty close (1/500 is about 1/400, 1/1250 is about 1/1000).

Can some one explain how to readjust the shutter tension? I removed the back plate with this method.
Also, how this will affect the speeds. Can I make 'em more accurate?

The main reason for this question is that I can't do street photography with a loud camera, but it would be great if I can make the speeds more accurate. 🙂

Guys, this is a wonderful forum, I hope someone can give 5 minutes for me and help me with this 😀
Thanks!

 

[wolves3012]

Hi guys.

I'm David, almost 17y old photography lover from Croatia.
I recently bought a Kiev 4 (1970) with J8M 50mm F2 for street photography and it works almost great (I haven't tried it with any film yet).
Meter isn't working but that's OK. The bigger problem is it's sound.
I understand that on slower speeds it has that louder whizzing sound and that's great but from 1/125 to 1/1250 it's really loud. So, I was reading a little and I figured I should readjust the shutter tension. But how?
I was looking around KSS and I don't know if that can be done without removing the whole shutter assembly from camera.

I measured the shutter speeds with my Fujifilm HS10 digital camera. It can record up to 1000fps so I recorded videos of the releasing shutter. After measurement it seems that most speeds are pretty close (1/500 is about 1/400, 1/1250 is about 1/1000).

Can some one explain how to readjust the shutter tension? I removed the back plate with this method.
Also, how this will affect the speeds. Can I make 'em more accurate?

The main reason for this question is that I can't do street photography with a loud camera, but it would be great if I can make the speeds more accurate. 🙂

Guys, this is a wonderful forum, I hope someone can give 5 minutes for me and help me with this 😀
Thanks!

The usual sound on a Kiev from 1/125th and up is just a clonk. If you've checked the speeds and they are already slow, reducing the shutter tension will really only make them worse and 1000th for the 1/1250th is actually about right. Later models were marked 1/1000th and it's said that this was to reflect the true speed and not a change in the mechanics.

Adjusting the tension is not for the faint-hearted, it's very easy to let the tensioner slip and lose it completely. If you do that, you start over (from memory, it should be about 7-8 turns from slack).
I thought the KSS showed where the tension adjustment was? Have another look and I'll have a look myself. You do need to remove the whole shutter assembly to get at the tension adjuster, as far as I recall.

EDIT: You can find the tensioner here, about 1/3 of the way down the page:
http://www3.telus.net/public/rpnchbck/replace shutter ribbons.html