Konsistent Kiev - it is possible !

[dee]

I won't go into why I can buy cameras , have a stock of cheap film , but can't get them processed ... but , I finally processed film from Oleg's Kiev 4m [ avatar ] and a Kiev 2 - both are absolutely fine !
A kiev 2a which was a lot cheaper, has flare problems and is obviously needs cla desperately , but I don't care !
Now have to work out how to scan and send in pics !
dee

[pinafore2]

I bought at Kiev 4, 1963 with meter, from Camera Mate this spring.
On the first roll i made a test of the shutter by shooting the same picture in 4 different settings:
1/125 f11, 1/250 f8, 1/500 f 5.6 and 1/1250 f4.
The first 3 results (Upload limit) from the scanned CD is shown here, pretty consistent i think. The 4 scan is showing the same good result as the other 3.
Per

[Mael]

If the film you used is negative color film, it does not mean anything because this kind of film can be overexposed 5 times without noticeable effects....

Try slide and you'll see what's a Kiev shutter that is not accurate...

[darkkavenger]

I tried slides with my Kiev-2A and it was spot-on (and using only sunny f16), maybe it depends which Kiev ;)

[pinafore2]

I definetily agree, that modern color-neg film can be over/under exposed and still make good results, maybe not 5 f-stops, but i still think this is an easy way to make a rough check of the shutter capabilities. If the result is this good, the camera can always be used for color-neg. film anyway.
I do a lot of slides, but i havent been around to try slidefilm in the Kiev yet. This should happen ASAP.
Per

[Mael]

I did not wanted to say that it is impossible to find a Kiev consistent. I did have some Spot-on shutter speed Kiev. But I had to overhauled the shutters.

[dee]

The point is that Oleg does overhaul the Kievs before selling - so I guess that makes the difference - and there is not so much latitude with colour neg to negate the findings - on to slides now !

[darkkavenger]

Mael: I must've been lucky, that '56 Kiev 2A worked flawlessly... I offered it to a friend of mine when I switched to Contax :)

[Stu W]

I've owned a couple of Kiev's and a lot of Contax's. I found that they performed best in the 1/125 and the 1/250 range. Faster and the shutter speeds were off-slower than the selected. 1/1250 was more like 1/800. I never had the shutters formally tested but I used the technique posted on Rick Oleson's page. It's been awhile but I seem to remember turning the camera sideways during the test because of the vertical shutters. Rick's method. http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-135.html
Stu

[ruben]

Great page Rick, thanks Stu for the link !

Cheers,
Ruben