Unearthed – Running film through an old Kiev rangefinder camera

I’m not a camera collector. At the same time, if a camera literally ends up in my lap, I generally can’t resist giving it a go. This happened to a Kiev rangefinder camera that I found in my dad’s attic. So…does it work?

In addition to not being a camera collector, I also happen to prefer reflex cameras, so my awareness of rangefinder models is kind of…basic. I was aware in general terms of something Soviet-produced in that category, but I didn’t know much about the Kiev camera history. And frankly, I still don’t. All I have been able to figure out by playing a game of “spot the ten differences” using some pictures online is that the Kiev on my desk happens to be the Kiev 4M type 4 model, putting its age at around 45-ish, presently.

I also understand that this is basically an incremental evolution of a pre-war Contax model. Never change a winning team, the Soviets must have thought. Not that I’d know; I think I may have held one of those Contaxes once for a minute – maybe. That’s about all I know about them.

It was slightly dirtier when I unearthed it in a pile of random electronicsphotocamerequipmenttoolspacksofpapertinsofrandomitemsetc. Many complimentary characteristics can be attributed to my dad. Running a tidy ship, however, is NOT one of them – bless him. He couldn’t tell me where the camera came from, and I don’t recall ever having seen him with it (let alone using it). It was just…there. Okay…

I had a closer look at it. My first impression was that it was basically a goner. The shutter speed dial seemed to be not connected to anything and the camera ran at one very, very slow speed (although consistently). On the other hand, the aperture seemed to work OK and the blades looked free of oil and debris (or rust!) Buuuut….the meter seemed to be dead, and the protective lid didn’t seem to want to stay down. The front lens element looked like a round, dusty pebble a kid might have picked up on the bank of a stream.

Overall, the camera looked like someone had photographed the Twin Towers coming down with it at fairly close distance, and had then put it in a box without doing as much as wiping the dust off. Like I said – a goner. I took it home anyway, because…I don’t know. Curiosity, I guess.

So fast forward a week or so, sitting behind my desk, playing with the camera. Cleaning it off a little. Taking a peek inside the film department – no film there, but hmm…looks pretty tidy in there. No dirt, scratches or obvious damage. I fondled my way through a small journey of discovery of the cameras basic functions, and figured out that the shutter speed dial in fact did something – it’s just that the round bezel with the speeds printed on was loose.

Also, while the arrangement with the back that lifts out of the camera is kind of clunky when working ‘in the field’ (hah, as if!), it does carry very little (if any) risk of light leaks. No degrading foam seals in there!

Cocking the shutter also seemed to work. And sure enough, setting the speeds did make a difference. The speeds sounded/looked sluggish to me, but fairly consistent. And it seemed that as long as I set the speed before cocking the shutter, the shutter would reliably go through the entire cycle.

Moreover, the rangefinder didn’t look half bad either, functionally speaking: vertical alignment was perfectly fine to begin with (so the Twin Towers apparently didn’t fall exactly on top of it), and actual focus alignment seemed plausible going by the correlation between the rangefinder focus and the distance scale on the lens.

Truth be told, the finder feels a bit like trying to peer into the Channel Tunnel from the Calais side, trying to see your mate on the Folkestone end. But – there’s a recognizable image. And the rangefinder patch is surprisingly usable.

And guess what – that meter that seemed to be dead, in fact did spring to life after having fidgeted a bit with the meter dials on the top left of the camera.

The lens cleaned up just fine and showed no scratches. It also seemed to come off the camera in the intended fashion – not that it’s needed, since I evidently don’t have any other lenses for this camera.

Soooo….maybee……run actual film through it?? I recently chopped up this cartwheel’s worth of Kodak Double-X anyway. Why not? Alright, let’s go! I loaded it up, and here’s my first impressions:

• Whaddayaknow, the frame counter actually seems to work as well!
• Very much like the Canonet QL25 and Konica Auto S2 I once owned, the camera is kind of clunky and heavy. Nothing like the compact affair of the Ricoh 500G I still have (the only rangefinder camera I actually kept).
• Having a meter on these is nice, but given that it’s not coupled to anything in the camera, I admit I didn’t bother using it. I’m not sure if it’s any good, really. The needle moves.
• Going from infinity to close focus makes me confident in stating that this is not an ‘action’ camera.
• Having the rangefinder aperture right where your finger is guaranteed to block it while turning the focus dial is a surprisingly elementary ergonomical faux-pas.
• Parallax is the name of the guy you forget about until you meet him again when reviewing your close-focus photos.
• Close-focus is really relative if the closest you’ll ever go is 90cm.
• It’s somewhat limiting if you have to decide what shutter speed you’ll use before cocking the shutter.
• On the plus side, it’s a rangefinder, so it’s relatively easy holding the whole thing reasonably still at slow-ish shutter speeds.

In short, I realize a spoiled boy with all those (quasi)-modern SLR’s that offer all sorts of luxuries like being able to set shutter speeds and aperture at will, not to mention the lavishness of having a light meter that communicates with anything else than an isolated dial where you can’t see it when it matters.

Most importantly: I find framing and actually composing an effective photograph pretty much impossible with a viewfinder that has only a very weak relationship with what will actually record on the film. The viewfinder affords a reasonable image of the center of the frame. But what matters in framing, is pretty much everything except the center.

Still. Million dollar question. Does it actually work?

Well – YES! It does. I literally only wiped the worst of the grime off of the camera and glued the shutter speed dial in place. Despite having sat around for years (likely decades), unused, I ended up with a roll of mostly OK images. The problems were mostly due to (1) my haphazard approach to exposure (“f/whatever and be somewhere”) and (2) the tendency of this lens to collect all light for miles around and spread it evenly across the frame. Which is to say – man, this thing flares like a mother…(beeper)! Other than that, the whole thing looks surprisingly functional.

Frame spacing is a little wide on the first few frames, but after that seems mostly consistent and normal. Focus for the most part looks OK. Framing, as said, is tricky – but could have been worse. I think the shutter is probably slow on some settings, maybe problematically so from time to time. Flare is severe, but the same was true for the lenses on many (most) consumer cameras from this era. Beyond this, I’m not going to conclude anything about the optical qualities of the lens. That would be daft. I didn’t do any rigorous tests – not even unrigorous tests. Things look usably sharp where you’d expect them to be. I think that’s fair enough by any account.

The film was Kodak Double-X, exposed at E.I.250 give or take a truckload, and development was in Pyrocat HD 1+1+100 for 14 minutes, with agitation for the first 30s and then one cycle every 3 minutes.

Overall, it’s a usable camera. And what I find most remarkable is how reliable this design apparently is. Often, when you dig up a camera this age, there’s some issue with it – gummed up focus helicoid, oily aperture blades, degraded light seals, inoperative shutter, etc. On this camera, the only thing that really doesn’t seem to work is the self-timer. I’m sure the shutter speeds are somewhat slow; I’d expect them to be sluggish by up to about a stop (maybe more on the 1/1000), but for shooting negative film, that’s certainly tolerable in my view. Good job, Kiev people!