Petone, Wellington, NZ, 2011: First roll from the cheaply/recently aquired Kiev 4m. The Kiev has a very interesting and long history… As part of post WWII war reparations, the Soviet Union dismantled East German factories and transplanted them behind the Iron Curtain. The Zeiss factory that manufactured Leica’s nemesis- the Contax– was one of them…
The factory was reconstructed at Arsenal in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. The camera was aptly called the Kiev. The Contax was years ahead of Leica by having a combined rangefinder/viewfinder window, a light-meter, metallic rather than cloth shutter curtains, and a manual focusing wheel… Kiev 4m/Jupiter 8
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