Vintage Rangefinder Camera

Rangefinder camera manufactured at the Kiev defense company Arsenal. Replaced essentially the same Kiev-3a. Kiev rangefinder cameras come from the Contax-2 and Contax-3 rangefinder cameras. A well-known fact is the transfer of equipment, documentation, specialists, components and other things by the German company Carl Zeiss Jena, due to the reparation of the country that suffered the most in the Second World War, namely the USSR. The Contax rangefinder cameras decided to continue to assemble at the facilities of the Arsenal defense enterprise, but the name itself was changed to a more acceptable Kiev. The first Kiev cameras were assembled from components for Contax cameras. German experts helped and assisted in the development of complex equipment. Many consider the rangefinders of Kiev a copy of Contax, although in fact the camera was “presented” and the Germans helped start production, albeit voluntarily-forcibly. Focusing – on the rangefinder. Shutter speeds are 1250-500-250-125-50-25-10-5-2 and “B”. Optics mount – Contax mount. The standard lens is Jupiter-8. The back cover is removable. Kiev-Contax is an order of magnitude more complicated and accomplishment than Leica-2 (FED-Zorkiy). Designers did not seek a compromise between quality and usability, rectangular shapes and heavy weight bribe and respect. Although ergonomics are not the best, mainly when focusing, the fingers of the right hand block the window of the rangefinder, thereby complicating the process. There is no usual cock of a platoon, instead of it a head – it’s a selector for selecting shutter speeds. We pack and treat all your orders with an antiseptic. My name is Ksenia. The city of Kiev. My Brother Ruslan And Husband Roma Helps Me We Have A Small Family Business. Thank you for your fun and I will be dear to you if you visit my store by the link below. Have a good day. We Do Gift Wrapping For The Parcel In The Parcel We Can Include Happy Birthday Greetings Or Any Other Holiday If You Need It. This item is in the category “Cameras & Photo\Vintage Movie & Photography\Vintage Cameras\Rangefinder Cameras”. The seller is “okskarb0″ and is located in this country: UA. This item can be shipped worldwide.

• Color: Black
• Model: 4A
• Country/Region of Manufacture: Ukraine
• Brand: Kiev

Kiev-20 was produced at the Kiev plant Arsenal from 1983 to 1986. The release was short lived. The production volumes are unknown to me, but they were modest, that’s for sure. The reason is the high price of the device. The Wiki says that in the 80s the Kiev-20 cost 400 rubles. Zenit-19 was a hundred cheaper. Yes, it was simpler, but a pair of LEDs and froze in the open are not worth this difference. Kiev-20 lens mount – H mount. Working distance – 46.5 mm. There is a repeater. The H mount, also known as Nikon F, is one of two small format camera mounts that have remained unchanged since the advent of autofocus and digital photography. Another type of such attachment, which has survived to this day, is the K mount, developed by Asahi Pentax. The remaining mounts for small-format optics, which appeared before the mid-1980s, are considered obsolete and replaced by fundamentally new ones, incompatible with previously released photographic equipment. All this allows you to use lenses from Kiev with modern Nikon DSLRs. More about this in a dedicated article. Moreover, if interesting Soviet optics with a K mount are quite rare, then excellent interchangeable lenses for Kiev-17 -19 -20 are very common. The standard lens Kiev-20 is Helios-81N 2/50 or Volna-4 1.4/53. The wave is very rare. The shutter is mechanical, lamella with vertical movement of two pairs of metal lamellae. Beats shutter speeds: 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000, V. There is conflicting information about the shutter. Basically, the sources say that the Kiev-20 shutter is similar to the Kiev-17 shutter. There is, however, an opinion that the shutter of the twentieth has been seriously redesigned. The mechanism for lifting the mirror is also very different. I can’t say anything here. The shutter is non-volatile. Without batteries, the device is fully functional. Without metering, of course. Flash sync at 1/60, same as seventeenth. The camera is equipped with hot and wired sync contacts, it also has a self-timer. Viewfinder image field size – 23 × 35 mm. The type of focusing screen is a Fresnel lens with a frosted ring, a microraster and Doden wedges. The weight of my copy without a lens is 745 grams. The design of Kiev-20 is almost indistinguishable from Kiev-17, but it’s exactly as long as you don’t put the cameras side by side. The differences are not radical, but they are, in fact, enough. Housing Kiev-20 has become higher. Due to this, the height of the pentaprism casing visually decreased. The casing itself has become more gentle, squat, in its shape there are fewer sharp corners. In general, Kiev-20 looks more massive and more solid than the seventeenth. In addition to the above, the trigger and shutter button have changed (both have become more convenient) and a film sensitivity selector has appeared on the left. The ergonomics of the Kiev-20 is quite decent. The shutter speed head is still on the front left. In the review of Kiev-17, I already spoke about this. For me, an acceptable location, but not the most convenient. The head rotates moderately tight, with clear clicks. A little lower on the mirror shaft is the bayonet lock pedal. On the right side, like the Kiev-17, there is a lever with a self-timer button and a tight diaphragm repeater pedal. Here above on light metal is a new element. This is the round black TTL metering enable button. Why didn’t they do a half-press on the shutter button? In Kiev-20, exposure metering will turn on with a separate button. The button can be pressed with the middle finger while holding the index finger on the trigger, but for me, for example, this is inconvenient. I prefer a firmer grip with all fingers. But I don’t find any problems in moving the index finger from the metering button to the shutter release. Here we turn to the main feature of the Kiev-20 – to measure on an open aperture. Kiev-20 is equipped with an AI (Automatic Indexing) system copied from Nikon. This system consists of. A a special drank in the back of the aperture ring on the lens. B a spring-loaded leash that goes around the shoulder strap of the lens mount on the camera. When attaching a lens, drank on the aperture ring catches the leash on the body of the device. Further, when switching apertures, the ring moves the leash. So the set aperture value is transferred to the exposure calculator. Moreover, not even the aperture value itself is transmitted, but the index of the ratio of the set aperture value to the lens aperture. Thanks to this, the system works with lenses of different luminosity, but its value does not need to be entered directly into the camera. Thanks to AI, things like framing, focusing and exposure always happen with the brightest possible picture. But in the exposure calculation, it is the working aperture value set on the lens that is taken into account. Lenses with an H mount are blinking, and therefore the aperture will close automatically to the working value after pressing the shutter button. Well, for modern cameras, all this is a dense routine, but. My name is Ksenia. The city of Kiev. My Brother Ruslan And Husband Roma Helps Me We Have A Small Family Business. Thank you for your fun and I will be dear to you if you visit my store by the link below. Have a good day. We Do Gift Wrapping For The Parcel In The Parcel We Can Include Happy Birthday Greetings Or Any Other Holiday If You Need It. This item is in the category “Cameras & Photo\Vintage Movie & Photography\Vintage Cameras\Rangefinder Cameras”. The seller is “okskarb0″ and is located in this country: UA. This item can be shipped worldwide.

• Model: 4A
• Country/Region of Manufacture: Ukraine
• Color: Black
• Brand: Kiev