Kiev merging into Contax ... Autism rules ?

[dee]

In a sense , this isn't about photography or camera collecting - it's deescovering a toy which is more real 3Dee than just about anything on this planet ! Having done so , trying to eliminate the tiny factors which my mind gets stuck on , together with lots of familiarity to teach my ' head ' that it's OK .

For example , I see the original Kiev II / III as real , but the different body of the Kiev 4 throws my mind ... I also saw an early Kiev 4 with plain meter top , no ridges , and this seems ' right ' . I have given up trying to work out where it all comes from !
However , the Kiev 4 smaller meter seems more ' right ' which may be due to familarity with a waist finder SLR ! LOL .

I have been recycling 1950s Dinky Toys [ a previous comfort zone , but too static now ] on e-bay to fund Kiev cameras . Thanks to Mike Haley and the ex-Arsenal Techs in Kiev , I can get my pre-war style cameras repaired etc .

I began with a pair of cla Kiev 4/4m from Oleg - and was hooked .
Then began a time of aquiring earlier cameras , to find that my ASdee had real dee'ficulty 'seeing' past certain details [ Cyrillic Script / cluttered engraving around the number , poor finish on later cameras ]

I then played around with silver paper labels with various scripts - hand drawn and reduced - Contax / 1947 / KNeB / KIEV [ my UK interpretation ]
I found that Contax and Kiev ' badged ' cameras were more accessible , but was also hooked on the 1947 'cos it's Birthday year ... but getting one chromed is difficult .

I then found a genuine Contax III which was much less expensive than I had anticipated ... with full restoration incl meter , and crisp collapsible Sonnar , it was £200 ... a CLA KNeB III would be £150 at least .

Overcoming my concerns about Contax / Kiev hybrids , I invested £40 in a parts camera Contax II which has been restored with Kiev shutter , silver paint , and tan leather for a total of £120 ... almost the going price of an early un-CLA KIev II these days .

However , the Contax III needed a meter part , so another broken Contax III went straight to Ukriane . Having a spare body , I made a Contax IV from a scrap Kiev 4 - with that non ridged meter top .
ASdee sorted ! A correct Contax IV !

Finally a really grunge Contax II - because I was intrigued by the idea of a rat camera , but it would be too expensive to just CLA , so it will be fitted with repro 1947 plate and painted .

Gradually , I have been migrating to Contax badged cameras which my head has no deeficulty with ' seeing ' [ you have no idea how this mind blindness messes everything up ]
It's because there seems to be a glut of broken Contax cameras on e-bay and I am reassured that they can be sorted .

My mind is fine with Contax and the plain accessory shoe without number , so I am having just one Kiev III modeefied with another Kiev IIIa/IV with the spare Contax plate in black .

It's indulgent , just to surround and ground ' me ' in an out of phase world , but scrap Contaxes have allowed me a ' set ' of profiles II / III / IV in Contax ' mode ' which will be far more accessible to me .

ASdee is crazee - it's about being unable to process input properly - but these safe / familiar / constant / consistent ' toys ' will help enormously .
I shall certainly be tempted to make ' magic pictures on the wall ' again !

Neither collector or photographer , trying to fit in anywhere is impossible , but sometimes something comes to the rescue from constant chaos .

 

[Sonnar Brian]

There are very few cameras that I "just can't get along with". Those tend to be newer AF type cameras. that depend on embedded processors. I could not get along with the Nikon F5. Too much computer in it. If I pick up a camera that is too much computer, I switch into Engineering mode and spend more time thiking how the embedded software could be redone. For example: there is an error in the N8008s firmware that causes it to lock up if the last frame is exactly at the end of the roll. If the frame cannot be advanced partially "at all", the camera locks-up and the batteries must be removed for 30 seconds, re-inserted, and immediately set to "manual rewind'. They should have put a Watchdog time-out trap in it. It uses an 8-bit processor. I could fix it for them.

No wonder I use mechanical cameras. I'd spend all my time reverse engineering the firmware and correcting it. Like I've done on several compilers on my PC. Rewrote the software multiple/devide routines for the FORTRAN-80 CP/M compiler. and that was 30 years ago. Had to disassemble the compiler to do it.

 

[dee]

Hi Brian -

That's why I jumped in on a Leica DIG 3 and L1 body - the digital stuff is incidental to it being a camera . The Pentax K 10d - bought 'cos it accepts a manual 50m f1.7 , is becoming a little more familar , but it still does not seem to be a camera - but I had the same probs with a Minolta 7000i auto focus ...
A Minolta 404si cheapy in silver , however , seems to be just a slightly bigger auto comact - with no pretensions - so that's OK . I love the silliness of the mind's perception .

I could do with my interface / recognition firmware sorted too !
It's like the hard drive was full in 1957 [ a decade ] and I can't deelete and add ' more appropriate ' [ 'cos appropriate to what ? - sense of self has to be located to create a fulcrum to allow appropriate . So post 1957 is very unreal .

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Those 1957 Hard Drives did not hold too much!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_350#IBM_350

Sometimes I know how you feel.

"I am a DOS Process" is my Mantra at work. Focus on one problem at a time, save to disk when required to work on another problem. Sometimes is goes into the bit bucket.

 

[dee]

In a sense , my mind is focusing on simplifying , correcting cameras to make them more accessible - rather like your tuning into flaws in the computer programme .
The deeference is that my head has a wierd perception of ' right ' which includes Leica II fake , but excludes Leica IIIc [ I got rid of a IIIf 'cos the shutter dial was too big / wrong !
LOL