Okay, controlled experiment has begun.
I set up a little still life -- subjects chosen more for a range of color and checkable detail than artistic value; a purple padded envelope (contains a black powder paper cartridge envelope cutting template that I haven't used yet), lime green Instax Mini 9, red-on-gray tube of Invisible Gloves (which I bought for the darkroom, but on reading the label is water soluble -- apparently only good for grease/oil), a roll of Verichrome Pan 828, an old Superia X-Tra 400 cassette with film hanging out, all on my speckle finish darkroom counter (with assorted dark colored junk in the background, because I'm not a neatnik).
Set up my #2 Kiev 4 (recently tested and found to expose accurately on speeds down to 25, not tested slower) with its Jupiter-8, loaded with expired appr. 2008 Superia X-Tra 400, on my cheap/light tripod (there's a space problem for using my big heavy one in the darkroom), found I was just barely able to back up enough to focus on the test scene. Good enough. Brought in a couple clamp lamps, one native LED (which was eliminated from the test due to a flicker slow enough to potentially change exposure between frames) and one reflector type with standard screw socket, with a daylight LED bulb installed (plenty of light); the incandescent room light was left on, but contributed little to the overall exposure). Metering with my Honeywell Pentax 1/21 spotmeter on the lit side of the purple envelope, and on the light surfaces of the Instax camera, both give f/8 at 1/25. Plan was to leave the camera set at 1/25 and adjust exposure for bracketing with the aperture. At minimum focus, there's every likelihood of losing sharpness on the wider open (f/5.6 and f/4) frames, but that's unimportant for this test.
Started shooting with the metered exposure, then one stop and two stops under (f/11, f/16) and one stop and two stops over (f/5.6 and f/4) -- and just about that time the shutter starting giving trouble: the speed dial wouldn't stay set when I advanced (speed setting is the advance knob on the Kiev, same as the Contax II/III). After the third time it messed up, I unloaded the camera (which, as you might expect, promptly started working right) and grabbed my Ricoh Singlex II with Super Takumar 50mm f/1.4; advanced 8 frames with the lens cap on, then resumed testing on the 9th, now with shutter at 1/30. I was able to get two more complete cycles of 5 exposures, and the metered and +1 for a (including the first with the Kiev) 4th before the 24 exposure roll ended.
After clearing up the lights, tripod, and setup, unloading and putting away the camera, I cut off most of the exposed leader, then went dark and pulled out approximately 45 cm of film (measured as two hand spans in the dark), clipped it off, loaded it into my single-reel Paterson tank, closed that up, then loaded the remainder (within a couple cm of the same length after cutting off the unusable tail) into a single reel in my two-reel Paterson.
Later today, I'll stand develop one half-roll at room temp, replenish 11ml, and put the chemicals into a tempering bath; once they're up to temperature, I'll process the other half roll in the standard process (drift-through temperature starting at 102F), replenish another 11ml -- and when the film is dry (tomorrow) I'll scan both strips for comparison of the results. My intention, assuming scanning software cooperates, is to establish color balance and exposure on an as-metered frame in the standard process strip, then lock exposure and set color settings to "manual" for all other frames. I haven't tried this before with this scanner, so I'm not certain how much I can override the "magic" between the actual negative and what I see on screen -- I may wind up having to manually scan as positives in order to avoid uncommanded corrections and then do the inversion manually (in Darktable?).
Planned comparison points: speed (hence the bracketing -- if I find a difference I may repeat with finer exposure increments to get a better speed correction figure), grain (hard to verify with my 10 year old flatbed scanner, but I'll report what I can or can't see), color correctness, color saturation, overall contrast. Based on the one roll I've processed in room temperature stand, I don't expect to see a lot of difference, but we'll all know by Monday.
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It's really a hot mess unfortunately. I had hoped it would work well myself.
