Kiev 4

The Kiev 4 is a rangefinder camera made in the Ukraine by the Arsenal factory, the Arsenal factory produced mainly Contax clones, the Arsenal factory was actually the Contax factory but disassembled and moved to the Ukraine after WW2 as war reparations.

The Arsenal factory made various Kiev cameras from II to 4, with some variants of each.

The Kiev 4 has some very good points, its got a large base rangefinder which allows for more accurate focusing, its all metal made, to a high quality, It has a built in lightmeter(mine works perfectly) It has a good amount of shutter speeds unlike some Soviet made cameras(speeds are B,10,25,50,125,250,500,1250)

There are a few negative points, the Kiev 4 has a removeable back which is a bit awkward, the focusing method is very unusual, its focused using a wheel above the rangefinder window, which requires a special way to hold the camera. The lightmeter is calibrated in GOST which is slightly different to ASA/ISO (I've been using Svema film in mine which is in GOST speeds, so not much of a problem for me.)

I like the Kiev 4, as its a high quality camera which is fairly user friendly