My Kiev's
My Kiev's
I have two Kiev's, both 1963 samples.
I have been i contact with Ruben because one of my Kiev's suddenlu "lost" 3 frames in the middle of a film.
Amongst other problems Ruben suggested that the rewind-spool could be too hard running. I found that this could bee the problem and after lubricating the rew-spool i have decided to give it another try. I do not shoot as much as Ruben, so it may take me a couple of week's to make the test so i havent got any results by now.
A part from this i am deeply in love with the Kiev's and i couldnt agree more with Ruben's wiewpoints. I would only disagree on one point, i do not think a camera needs to have a built in meter to be considered a pro-tool. I think the CONTAX/KIEV was the pro-tool of it's age and i still consider it a wery god device for taking photographs today, but you got to know what you are dealing with. It is not possible to go from the mobile-phone camera to the Kiev without some degree of instruction.
I have been shooting for many years, starting with a Retina 1a and a handheld meter, moving to non-interchangeable lens RF, to an old threadmount SLR, and finally to a state of the art (in 1985) fully automatic SLR.
A few years ago i suddenly, for some reason, got sort of a "Lieca-fever". Ithought the old Leica-3 was the prettiest thing i had ever seen.
I do admit that this could maybe be a reaction to the common digital trend. I would really love to own a good digital SLR, but on the other hand i am very much attracted to the simplicity of the traditional film-based photography and terribly frightened with all the menu-systems, buttons and mumbojumbo that they place on those digital devices.
Since i have allways been interested in photo-history i became a member of a national "Photographic history society" and through their publications i bekame aware of the CONTAX, and it's brother the Kiev.
I found that this device sounded so very interesting that i decided to get one and this decision i have not regretted.
I bought the first Kiev from Camera-mate and it has been working flawlesly. The second i found on E-bay and when i got it i had to adjust the rangefinder, but ok then it worked fine until the lost frames.
I have never had any problems with shutters, both camera's have excellent speeds and exposures seems to be spot-on. The latter Kiev being a little bit smoother to wind.
The only thing i miss is maybe a larger selection of possible lenses, i can see that the LTM-RF may have an advantage of more possibilities here.
Thank's to Ruben for being an inspiration in the world of the Kiev's
Per
