Kiev 4a or 4am?

[reagan]

One day down the road I plan on adding a Kiev to my small gaggle of cameras. When you find the time, would some of you Kiev aficianados mind giving me your humble opinions / likes and dislikes concerning the 4A and 4AM models?

Are the differences in these two models noteworthy?

Are there particular years where quality seemed better than others?

Glitches to watch out for when buying?

Are there adaptors/converters that can broaden the lens selection?

There may be old threads that cover a comparison of these two. link?

I'm a shooter, not a collector, so I'm looking for info to take to the streets, not put on a shelf and dust occasionally.

Many thanks !!

 

[back alley]

i think the one with the meter on top is butt ugly.

other than that i have little experience.
i had one for a brief time and liked the feel of the camera. the angled edges, not rounded.
it felt incredibly solid and well made.
mine was the model w/o the meter.
joe

 

[fraley]

CVBLZ4, check out this site: http://www.keithberry.telinco.co.uk/Kiev-4.htm

Here's an excerpt from it. Also see http://www3.telus.net/public/kaylalyn/related_links.html which has related links.

You might as well get both, you're going to want whichever one you didn't get, eventually 🙂

The Kiev 4 is best if you prefer the lower, sleeker appearance of the post war Contax IIIa. The base stand is gone and the 5/8" tripod bush is now part of the body instead of the removable base as in the earlier models, again to make it more like the IIIa, but the two cassette option remains and the pull-out rewind knob is smaller and quite tolerable to use with one cassette and spool. The meter 'turret' is replaced by easier to see flat rings. The 4 models are also cheaper to buy because there are so many of them, this being the most successful model in terms of production runs. The Kiev 4A is more like a 2A but with the Contax IIIa-type base. It has a film speed reminder dial added to the large, awkward and s-l-o-w rewind knob.

The Kiev 4M/4AM is best if you are willing to forgo the classic look in favour of a more modern design with its black, easier to see shutter dial and its very useful cranked rewind knob. The film take-up spool is now fixed so it is more convenient for those who buy their films in cassettes and send them for processing. The tripod bush is now threaded for the smaller, more modern 1/4" tripod heads. Of particular interest is that these modifications are the first to be applied to the Kiev that weren't Zeiss inspired.

 

[reagan]

You might as well get both, you're going to want whichever one you didn't get, eventually 🙂

Shhhh! Don't tell my wife. She thinks I'm being a "wise shopper." Geeez. What is she thinkin'? We're not talkin' Gucci shoes and satin purses here!! C'mon!

 

[wlewisiii]

If you're looking for a good shooter, I'd say a 4am from a good seller (www.okvintagecamera.com, www.fedka.com/catalog/ etc.) is your best starting point. As for a lens, I prefer the look of the classic Jupiter 8m - it's a great lens. Later, if you like the Kiev/Contax experiance you can look for other lenses.

The lens selection isn't as large as for LTM, but there is more available than many people realize. A partial list is here http://www005.upp.so-net.ne.jp/chatvert/zeiss/cx.html but it doesn't list the Cosina SC mount lenses and there may be others that it missed. The various Jupiters are a great buy and the Kiev/Contax mount versions tend to be better built (in my experiance) than thier LTM counterparts.

Depending on where in Illinois you're from, you are certainly welcome to come to Madison WI and try out my Kievs sometime.

William

 

[pshinkaw]

You buy two shoes at a time don't you? Why shouldn't you buy a pair of cameras?

-Paul

 

[back alley]

You buy two shoes at a time don't you? Why shouldn't you buy a pair of cameras?

-Paul

simple, yet brilliant!

joe

 

[Roman]

Well, I see I agree with most of my pre-posters:
I also dislike the look of the models with the meter on top, the sleeker meterless bodies are nicer.
While the 4AM is said to have worse build quality (which I don't notice on mine), those little modifications (esp. built-in take-up spool) make it so much easier to use.
I also prefer the Jupiter-8m to the Helios-103, and you should also get a Jupiter-12; the 85mm Jupiter-9 is a very good lens, but hard to use for portraits due to parallax with external finders, be careful not to cut off anything and frame very loosely if getting that one...

Roman

 

[reagan]

Thanks for all the tips, info and links. Just what I needed.

And I ran the "since we buy shoes by the pair, why shouldn't we buy cameras by the pair" line by my wife. She replied, "Two feet, two shoes...... One wife, one camera."

Hmmmm.... ......... ........ I told her I'd sleep on it, and give her my final answer tomorrow.

Anyway, I've got a Zorki on the way and I'm saving my Zorki Zoids for other lenses. The Kiev(s) just has to wait.

 

[back alley]

She replied, "Two feet, two shoes...... One wife, one camera."

damn, you married a smart one!
very foolish on your part but i guess ya gotta live with it now. 😉

joe

 

[reagan]

Who carries the brains in our family is obvious. My wife goes to the mall and comes home with NEW shoes she can wear TODAY while I sit barefoot for three weeks and wait for the postman to bring me a thirty year old camera from RUSSIA!!

 

[tedwhite]

Which model did I just buy last night on ebay?

See it at: #7505599997.

Ted

 

[ray_g]

That's a Kiev 4am, Ted.

Ray

 

[carolus]

Kiev 4/a

Kiev 4/a

The Kiev 3 and 3A have the big ugly meter. The Kiev 4A has no meter and is a modernised Kiev 2A. The Kiev 4 has the elegant compact (low profile) meter and classic looks. (You can tell from this that I have a 4!) My meter is accurate. Note that the film speed dial is in Russian GOST units, so set ISO film speed plus 1/3 stop.

All these cameras have the most complex shutter ever made, which is their weak point: replacement shutter springs are now difficult to obtain. Remove back cover and observe shutter operation at all speeds. Due to a weak spring, my second blind closed very slowly at slow shutter speeds: althought this didn't much affect general photography, it took several years to mend! Also my back cover retaining spring needed replacement.

My f/2 50mm Jupiter 8 lens is good when stopped down to f/4 (better than the pre-war f/2.8 50mm Tessar) or less, but contrast is poor at f/2.8 and very poor at f/2; it has excellent correction for chromatic aberration.

 

[tedwhite]

Thanks, Carolus. The seller thought the J8 was f:1.8, but that's obviously not the case. The Kiev 4a that Rick Beckrich loaned me last February had the Helios 103, which seemed to work fairly well. Some folks on this forum feel the J8 is a better lens? Rick's loan was what did it. I really liked the feel of the Kiev. Not to mention the challenge of figuring out how to use it after 20 years with Minolta Maxxums.

Ray says it's a 4am. I'm not sure what the "m" designates.

The camera looks like it's in fairly good shape. I've got a FED-2 coming. I thought I'd collect the three: FED, KIEV, and ZORKi, and call it quits. When I say "collect" I don't mean to imply that I'm a collector. I'm not. I use my cameras. Just got a J8 LTM Friday. Yesterday screwed it onto my Bessa R and took pics at our annual Classic car show.

Regards,

Ted

Ted

 

[varjag]

I'm not sure what the "m" designates.

"Modified"

 

[Roman]

BTW, about Helios-103 and J-8m: the differences between those two are not that big - the Helios is maybe a bit sharper wide open, the J-8m has slightly smoother bokeh, and the Helios can produce some weird parabolic-shaped reflections under certain conditions (bright OOF objects in high contrast situations, IIRC - there was a thread with example pictures quite a while ago on the BestStuff forum). The J-8m is also slightly smaller, with the older brown leather cases, they are harder to close when a Helios is mounted.

Roman

 

[pshinkaw]

"one wife, one camera"

A clear trump card. It's not worth having two wives just to be able to own two cameras.

-Paul

 

[tedwhite]

While using the J8 on the Bessa R Saturday I noticed that when I rotate the aperture ring, the lens rotates with it, thus losing the position it was in when I focused it. My solution to this problem was to simply press the side of the lens with my right index finger, thus holding it in place while changing aperture settings with my left hand.

A minor annoyance.

Ted

 

[varjag]

BTW, about Helios-103 and J-8m: the differences between those two are not that big - the Helios is maybe a bit sharper wide open, the J-8m has slightly smoother bokeh, and the Helios can produce some weird parabolic-shaped reflections under certain conditions (bright OOF objects in high contrast situations, IIRC - there was a thread with example pictures quite a while ago on the BestStuff forum).

My H-103 is a whole bit sharper than my J-8M when opened.. for a night shooter the difference is dramatic. It is indeed prone to flare in daylight, so a hood is a must.