My First Roll with a Kiev 4 Camera

Here you can see some photos taken with my Kiev 4 camera. It’s an awesome rangefinder camera, which I owned for some months last year.

I love rangefinder cameras for street photography. The focusing system is fast and accurate, and the shutter is quiet. In the case of the Kiev cameras, the shutter is very quiet and the focusing is very accurate due to the large base of the rangefinder (the distance between the two windows in front of the camera). For my first roll I went to the main public garden in Como to take some photos of a sporting event.

Rowing is a great sport, and my city, Como, has a great traditions, with its Club “Canottieri Lario”, famous for its world and Olympic champions (Sinigaglia, Gilardoni and many others).

I used the Kiev 4 camera with two lenses: a Gelios 103 and a Jupiter 8 (both with 50mm focal lenght). The differences in minimal, both lenses are very sharp with great contrast.

• A photo taken with the Gelios 103 lens

• A photo taken with the Jupiter 8 lens

The Gelios 103 has more green dominants (maybe due to the coating of the lens), the Jupiter 8 is more neutral and very similar to the same lens (in M39 mount) that I use on my Zorki 4 camera.

I love the bright and accurate viewfinder. The only disadvantage that I have had with this camera was the focusing system (you can focusing not rotating the lens barrel, but acting on a small gear near the shutter button, like in the old Contax rangefinder cameras). I prefer to focus rotating the lens, as in the Leica, Fed and Zorki cameras!

For this reason, after few months I exchanged this camera with a Fed 2, another great camera with a large base rangefinder.

Note: if you are buying a Kiev camera, please take care about the closure of the back door; sometimes, old back cover are not hermetic and become the cause of significant light leaks.

written by sirio174 on 2012-07-04 #gear #rangefinder #review #kiev #kiev-4 #camera-review #lomography #contax #jupiter-8 #user-review #requested-post #gelios-103