Kiev and Contax - interchangability of parts

Hi all, have seen the recent posts from Dee re. the Kontax and interchangeability of parts. Basically, the entire chassis from a Kiev can be fitted to a Contax, or a number of components can be swapped. Any of the rangefinder/viewfinder optics and gears are interchangeable. In terms of shutter blinds, any Contax which has the little cast stop on the left hand bottom of the chassis will take Kiev shutter blinds. There are problems fitting Arsenal ribbon to original Contax blinds as the Arsenal ribbon is slightly thicker - Zeiss Jena engineers amended the design of the clutches during development of the Kiev (originally to be called the Volga)to use the available ribbon. There are issues with trying to use Kiev escapement gears in the shutter escapement assembly as the gear tooth cutting is slightly different, and at some point Arsenal altered the number of teeth so they will no mesh with the Ziess originals. Most of the body and back castings can be interchanged, however not so for the Kiev 4 as the back design was altered and the tripod bush moved to the camera body rather than the camera back. However a Contax mechanism will fit a Kiev 4, as will all the chrome parts, to make a 'Kievtax' 4.
Re. the meter, very early Kiev III's had Zeiss meters, Arsenal then simplified the assembly - Ziess meters had a brass frame around the selenium cell making it very easy to replace, however Arsenal soldered a wire to the cell. The large cells are very hard to find now for the Contax and Kiev III, however the small Kiev 4 cells can be bought from http://www.okvintagecamera.com/kievparts.php
Re quality, it is interesting that the optical quality and finish of the rangefinder/viewfinder components remained consistently good whilst shutter and body component quality fell away. You can see where the tooling, gear cutting and milling machinery became very worn and was not able to produce the Zeiss quality finish.

Cheers,

Steve

Hello Steve,

thank you for all this info! Aha! So the Kiev-4 does diverge with the Contax in design so part don't fit quite together! I was always wondering about that, thank you for clarification!

Best regards,
Vlad.

Hi Vlad, yes it's interesting what Arsenal did with the Kiev 4. If you put a Contax IIIa next to a Kiev 4 you can see Arsenal tried to make the Kiev 4 look like the Contax IIIa. The back was redesigned with the little rivets as per Contax and a direct copy of the back locks. They copied the meter top cover and calibration scales to look almost exactly like the Contax IIIa, but kept the old carbon variable resistor rather than copy the really complex Contax IIIa design. Problem is that the Contax IIIa was a narrower camera,the Arsenal redesign of the Kiev back and film pressure plate was weaker, some say film flatness is affected as a result. The final victory was for Arsenal, as Zeiss discontinued the Contax in 1961 whilst the Kiev lasted until the 1980's !

Thanks Steve.
This is fascinating as Mike tells me that the Arsenal Techs had never tried to fix Contax cameras before mine.

It all came about because ASD has problems with Cyrillic script and broken Contax cameras began being offered at around Ј40.
Mike in Ukraine was instrumental at liaising with the ex-Arsenal techs to make it all possible.

Incidentally, the Contax III and Kiev III meter parts seem not to be interchangeable requiring a second scrap Contax III body which eventually became the Contax IV.
It appears that the repair was extremely tricky, and the tech went way beyond expectations to complete it.

Controversially, I sourced early Kiev 4 bodies without the ridges on the meter covers, just because they more accurately reflected the post war Contax design.
In my defence they were really rough and, compared to a Kiev II, not worth restoring.
Even my original 1957 Kiev 4 is pretty poor,but it does appear to have been serviced at some point as works fine.

dee

Hi Dee, glad to hear you are still using Kiev's - I have just been working on my collection of 8, ranging from a 1948 model to a 1980's one. The early Kiev III type meter was a different design, though it looked like the Zeiss one. This was due mainly to the destruction of the tooling - East German Zeiss produced as near a copy as was possible for the Kiev III though very early cameras had Zeiss meters fitted. West German Zeiss continued making the original meter (though a mirror copy with the meter window on the left) for the Super Ikonta. I have interchanged the selenium cells between the Super Ikonta and Contax III - they are identical and deliver the same voltage, which should be about 1.35V. The Arsenal guys should be very much at home working on Contax RF's - the biggest issue would be spares where the design had been changed from the Zeiss original.

Cheers,

Steve

Without Kiev, it would be almost impossible (or either very expensive) to keep an old Contax in working condition.
At the moment, I have both a Kiev 4a and a Contax II for repair. The Contax is getting new rangefinder parts from a Kiev.

Some parts in de production process where fitted to each individual camera, these might be interchangeable, but the original part fits the best in that case. That's a way of design found in later camera's they built like the Kiev 88 and 19.

Not so very long ago I visited a former Kiev repairman here in Holland, sharing parts, experience, stories. There is so much handwork and crafting involved in these camera's, despite they where mass produced. You really have something with character, like a mechanical watch.