[rollei_list] Re: OT: Contaces and Kiev RF's

At 11:42 AM 10/18/2006, Laurence Cuffe wrote:

Indeed, Marc - but he includes later Kievs that were not assembled from Contax parts in this assessment, and is of the opinion that detail engineering changes in the II and III at Arsenal led to greater reliability. I pass this on second-hand, as I have but a later Kiev 4 which is OK but nothing special. Although he hasn't got quite the literary pedigree you have, he is actually a published author in the Leica world. I can't recall how many Kiev variants he has identified, but it's either 53 or 56 - I have a copy of his work on the topic on CD somewhere, but would confess that I've not looked at it for a couple of years.


I would suggest that you have your friend read Minoru Sasaki's seminal CONTAX TO KIEV: A REPORT ON THE MUTATION and Jean-Luc Princelle's MADE IN USSR (the SECOND edition, not the first edition!). These are the dispositive works on the construction of the Kiev RF family and of its transition from German to Ukrainian manufacture.

I am not sure what your friend means by "detail engineering changes" but the changes made were certainly not intended to improve the camera but simply to adapt the Jena Contax to Soviet production economics and materials.

I own these cameras and have shot with all of the major models and have done so extensively. I have overhauled a couple of them. The Kiev RF's are nice cameras but they just are not better-built than the Dresden II or III models or than the Stuttgart IIa and IIIa.

Marc



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