After the
end of WWII, the USSR seized the Contax tools and the Zeiss factories in
Germany as part of the war reparations. They took the tools and all left over
parts, along with a bunch of the German engineers, and transferred them to
Kiev, Ukraine. There, the Contax\Zeiss cameras went through a few minor modifications
to become the Kiev III and, eventually, the Kiev 4. The Kiev 4 comes in the regular
4 (has a light meter)and the 4A (no light meter).
Check out
these stats for the Kiev 4A basics:
| Camera Name | Kiev 4A |  |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Kiev | |
| Place of Manufacture | USSR | |
| Date of Manufacture | 1958-1980 (my serial # seems to indicate that it was made in 1977) | |
| Focusing System | Coupled rangefinder (90mm base length; coincident image) 1.0x magnification factor Viewfinder shows 50mm frame of view. Zilch eye relief. | |
| Lens Mount | Zeiss Contax RF bayonet compatible Standard lenses: 52mm f/2 Jupiter-8 | |
| Shutter | Vertical slat focal plane shutter 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000 of a second and "B". Self-timer | |
| Metering System | None | |
| Flash | External cold shoe PC cable connector on left side 1/25 sec X flash sync | |
| Film type | Type 135 film (35mm standard) | |
| Battery type | none | |
| Dimensions and weight | Body: 150mm x 79mm x 45mm, 560g Body+lens: xx x x x xx mm, xx g (w/ 50mm f/2) | |
 |
These cameras usually come looking
like this, though they can be customized by changing the skin or painting them
(shown below).
|
The
sharpness of the basic 35mm, 50mm and 85mm lenses is well established, plus
Kievs come with these awesome leather cases (part of which stay on the camera
with the attached leather straps, so you feel bad-ass). |
This is how you focus on a Kiev.
|
 |
| These cameras even have timers which, based on the effort it takes to get your subject in focus, I find pretty lolzy. |
To finish,
here are some known quirks of the Kiev 4A model. Firstly, don’t adjust the
shutter speed without first winding the camera! When changing to a slower
shutter speed, rotate counter-clockwise. This will energize the slow-shutter
speed mechanism (you’ll fell it when you move from 1/60 to 1/15 and slower). For
B and 1/30 sec (which is the unmarked X-sync speed), rotate clockwise.
In
addition, the irregular distance between the individual frames, thought
relatively harmless, seems to be another kink.
The final quirk of a Kiev is one I have grown quite fond of; from time to time, these cameras have their dysfunctional moments... It's difficult to explain what exactly that means, but suffice to say that it can produce these odd, once-in-a-lifetime mystifying photos. It's part of the magic of analog photography.
 |
| This is an example of the "magic" I'm referring to. Though it may seem like the back cover of the camera wasn't put on properly, causing some light to leak through the bottom of the film, this possibility is eliminated due to the other photographs in the set looking normal. How could light have leaked into only one shot? The really interesting part, though, is that it looks like the people in the photo are reacting to the light (the woman on the left seems to be shielding her eyes, and the couple on the right seems to be looking towards it), but there was nothing actually there at the time I took the photo... Magic. :-) |
If you are really interested in learning to use a Kiev 4a, please check out this Users Manual at DVDTECHCAMERAS.COM that someone has so graciously taken the time to translate into English, bless their hearts. Original illustrations included! Link below.
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