Got my Kiev 4a today but.....

[Sam]

I got a beautiful 4a today from dvdtechnik but it has some weird take up spool. I had to trim the film to get it to fit. The hole with the clip that holds the film on the spool is in the CENTER not the bottom as in most cameras. I this normal?? Is there a work around?

[wlewisiii]

There are so many varieties of take up spool that I hesitate to even consider describing them. What I have found to work well is a bit of black electrical tape - just enough to hold the leader to the spool and then when rewinding I stop as soon as I feel the difference in tension. I now have a good spool in my 5 that I don't need to do that with, but in my Kiev 4a I do.

Hope this helps,

William

[Sam]

and it does seem to be wide enough

[Sam]

It looks like it could be the spool from an old film cassette and not the original spool.

[Doug]

I think Sam's got it right; a spool from a film cassette. Some do have a narrow center slot. You could take a fine-toothed jigsaw blade and lengthen the slot...

[Pherdinand]

The same type of spool was in our old Smena russian viewfinder camera. In that time, it was kinda popular. I still remember that the film end had to be trimmed or taped to the spool.

[Rick Beckrich]

Sam & Doug are most likely correct;

Try this: http://host.fptoday.com/melek/zeiss/repair/spool.html

Also, click on "Search" and enter "spool" for more comments.

[Tom Tiger]

This happens a lot, people lose the original takeupspool. A lot of sellers fit a filmspool from an old roll which funny enough works even though you sometimes have to tape the film to the spool :-) I've got several Kiev 4's and only two which had the orginal take upspool. Offcourse later models like the 4M and 4AM, have a fixed take up spool.

Still.... the Kiev 4 series is a great rangefinder, wide angle based, bayonet mount.....

L8tr... Tom

[Pherdinand]

You can get a film spool (Kodak is best since it's not slitted) and cut a slit in it from the side, to make your own take-up spool. I did that for my contax rf, it took 10 minutes.

EDIT: ok, i was talking about the same procedure as in the link given above by Rick.

[Zorkiiglaza]

Just tape it on. Also make a few extras and then you have some quick loads ready to use.