Another camera added to my collection……..

You can never have to many cameras, well thats what I believe anyway.

I picked up a lovely Kiev 4 this week from my favorite camera dealers West Yorkshire Cameras.

It came with a 135mm f4 and a Jupiter 8, 50mm f2 lens which surprisingly is reasonable sharp wide open, both the shots above were taken at F2 using ilford HP5.

The only problem I had when first using it was the arrangement of the rangefinder window as it is where my hand goes to fire the shutter instead of over the lens like other rangefinders I have tried.I popped out for a walk to give the camera a run out.

It has a selenium meter but after a quick glance at the manual to try to understand how it works I got a bit lost so I used my Zeiss Ikon Ikophot lightmeter instead.

The camera was a joy to use as long as I remembered not to put my finger over the rangefinder window, the focussing was very quick and easy due to the really bright viewfinder.

I tried most of the shots at f4 to f8 as it was rather bright and the shutter only went to 1/1000 sec.I was extremely impressed with the sharpness and contrast from the lens from f4 and up. And even at f2.8 the look I got was really nice, I am so pleased with this camera.

I love my Zorki 4k but this really puts that in the shade especially when trying to focus in low light.

I cannot use the 135mm yet as I need an external viewfinder but the 50mm is so good I am not in a rush to get one yet.Thanks for looking

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