Kiev 4 framing

Pentode said:

I have one of those Soviet turret finders but I seldom use it. The view is a little brighter in an old Steinheil zoom finder I have but brighter and bigger still in the accessory finder from my Canon Serenar 35mm so I just tend to use that with the J12. The dedicated 35mm Soviet finders are very cheap and plentiful, though, and I’m sure they’d work fine.

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One drawback to the Kiev system is once you change lenses, their is no rangefinder, right? It is basically estimate focus.

It's not the Kiev system it's actually many older rangefinders including Leica III that need external viewfinders. Also later ones where the framelines aren't in the inbuilt viewfinder. You don't need to guess to focus though. What you do is you focus with the rangefinder window, then frame with the other.

Carriage said:

It's not the Kiev system it's actually many older rangefinders including Leica III that need external viewfinders. Also later ones where the framelines aren't in the inbuilt viewfinder. You don't need to guess to focus though. What you do is you focus with the rangefinder window, then frame with the other.

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I do not think (most if not any of) the non-50mm Jupiter lenses are coupled to the rangefinder. I guess you read and transfer the distance. Just an extra step, I guess. I think some of the original Leicas actually had separate viewfinder and focusing windows anyway, but were probably mostly coupled.

markjwyatt said:

One drawback to the Kiev system is once you change lenses, their is no rangefinder, right? It is basically estimate focus.

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The rangefinder works with the 35mm Jupiter 12, as well as 50mm Jupiter and Helios lenses.

The Kiev is a copy of the Contax II rangefinder camera. The rangefinder is coupled to all lenses designed for it. I have used 21mm through 135mm lenses, all rangefinder coupled and accurate.

markjwyatt said:

One drawback to the Kiev system is once you change lenses, their is no rangefinder, right? It is basically estimate focus.

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Carriage and btaylor are correct: all the lenses designed to work on the Kiev (which is any lens available in a Contax/Kiev mount) will couple to the rangefinder. You focus with the rangefinder and then, if the lens isn’t 50mm, you frame using an external viewfinder of your choice.

This is good to know. It is not as limited as I had thought. I need to calibrate my brain to rangefinder cameras.

I recently picked up two more Kiev 4 cameras. Both work, but both suffer from an identical issue. The first four or five frames suffer from large framing gaps, after which framing is normal. I find this very odd, especially on two cameras of different ages from separate sources. This makes scanning the first strip impossible, and is uneconomical on film. Any thoughts?

If you don't have an instruction manual, go to https://www.butkus.org/chinon/russian/kiev-4/kieva-a-splash.htm Brother Butkus is a wonderful resource, send him a few dollars so he can keep up the good work. BTW, the lens mount on the Kiev 4 and 4a is identical to that of the Nikon S2 rangefinder. But.... due to a difference in the body's focus helical accurate focus closer than infinity is unreliable with lenses other than wide angle optics, at least that's how I understand it. So,that lovely 85mm f2 or whatever for the Kiev (or Contax) won't focus properly on my Nikon S2. The Voigtlander 21mm and 35mm lenses for my S2 work fine on my Kiev 4.