So Zeissfan, you are saying that the greedy communist camera will give me the equivalent experience that I would get from a svelte well fed West German version?
Michael
Ha ha -- good one.
I've read that the earlier Kiev cameras had better quality control because the Germans engineers were still involved in the production.
If you handled a Kiev and a Contax II in the dark, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, except for the lower-quality covering of the Kiev.
If you want the Contax experience but don't have the cash (champagne on a beer budget), find a Kiev that works. And the plus is that you can use any Carl Zeiss lens with this camera (except for the 21mm Biogon).
Classic camera author Ivor Mantanle wrote in a magazine article several years ago that the Contax II had a somewhat high rejection rate on the factory line, which was one of the contributing factors to its high price.
When the Soviets began to make the Kiev, they set unreasonably high production quotas, which meant that nearly every camera that was produced would eventually be put up for sale, including those that would have failed German quality standards.
Once the Germans were no longer involved with production, quality control began to slip, but production quotas didn't shrink and in fact were raised each year. This doesn't mean that all Kievs were bad, but that a higher percentage of them should never have been released to the public.
I should search for the article so I can summarize it properly, although I think this is the gist of what it said, regarding production.
