Got my Kiev.........

......today . 8 days from Donetsk Ukraine. Not bad at all.
It`s a pretty nice 4AM with a perfect Helios 103 from Alex-Photo , actually a beauty , very clean and everything works smoothly and quietly but I haven`t yet put a roll thru it. Maybe tomorrow.
I`m going to try out my newly acquired Jupiter-12 on it first, but also looking forward to that fast f/1.8 Helios for natural indoor low light indoors .
Strange focus wheel reminds me of my Kodak 35 RF. Kinda archaic even for the period. The back cover is kinda thin and tinny too. I can understand why some people think these later models are of questionably quality.
Regardless, I do like the overall feel.
Added next day: Shot a roll of B&W using both lenses and encountered no glitches whatsoever.
All went very smoothly. The VF is kinda nice but that re-wind knob definitely belongs on a cheap plastic toy camera and why they opted to put a cheap piece of trash like that on this camera is beyond my imagination so I`ll be changing that very soon.

John

John,

You should went for the Non-M model then.. they still have the metal knobs. I've also shot with this particular camera with decent results. One thing that strikes me odd on these Kievs is the quietness of shutter, I keep thinking that it did not fire.

Vlad

Vlad- These quietness of old Kievs (Contax models) are partly due to grease stiffness of the years. Those older series are also made under more rigid gear dimension control directly inherited from German people.
In order to enlarge production (-Kiev 4 series was by far the world's largest production of top quality cameras-) a greater allowance was done to parts dimentions enabling mass production of parts. Relubing these old Kievs they sudden loose part of this complete smoothness, although they still are quieter than more recent ones.

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Originally posted by Vlad

John,

You should went for the Non-M model then.. they still have the metal knobs. I've also shot with this particular camera with decent results. One thing that strikes me odd on these Kievs is the quietness of shutter, I keep thinking that it did not fire.

Vlad

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Actually I have no faults with the camera except the re winder.
I`ll probably replace it with a better one off a Japanese SLR.
Finding a screw will be the hardest part I think but I could also retap the threads. Or will it hurt the value of the camera? heh,heh,heh.

well these cameras are quite common so I would not worry about affecting its value .. maybe you can get a Kiev 4 or Kiev 4a broken sold for parts and get a knob from there?

Vlad

OK, I took things into my own hands and performed a bit of surgery.
It seems the tiny stainless flat spring (under the handle) that keeps the handle locked in place was bent / unsprung causing my re- winder handle to flop around. I reshaped it and I can now live with it since it works as new.
Fortunately my Kiev 4AM happens to wind the film smoothly and easily , doesn`t skip or tear sprocket holes and rewinds nice and smooth too.
I enjoyed what one poster wrote about what particular FSU camera and model is best. He wrote something like you should not be too concerned which is best as long as the one you have is working properly.
I like that philosophy.
John