The Kiev camera - history

The Kiev 35mm interchangeable lens rangefinder film camera is one of the best known of Soviet era camera brands in the West and many are still used by photography enthusiasts around the world.

Seven years after the launch of the Leica 1 at the Leipzig Fair, Carl Zeiss announced the first Contax, a 35mm camera with a coupled rangefinder. 1932 also saw the launch of the Leica II featuring a rangefinder.

The Contax was larger, heavier and more expensive than the Leica, but great resolving power and high contrast of the 5cm Tessar, later 5cm Sonnar and majority of the different focal length objectives produced for the system in the 1930s and 40s found favour with many professionals. The camera was manufactured in Dresden with lenses produced at Jena.

At the end of WWII, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Dresden factory and trucked - under the war reparations scheme - the dies and machinery used to make the Zeiss camera to the Kiyev Zavod Arsenal in the Ukraine. By 1947, a modified Contax II camera was in production with a new name; Kiev-2. The same camera was also produced at Jena and called the Jena Contax II.

The Kiev version was almost identical to the pre-war German product, but by the time the Moscow export bureau Mashpriborintorg were shipping samples to western retailers, some engineering aspects of the camera had been simplified. The Kiev sold steadily in the West where for a brief time in the 1960s, the 'No-name Kiev' appeared without a brand name on the front plate.

In the eyes of those who knew, the Kiev was not a Zeiss Contax, but it was a good copy. The most common models found in the West are the Kiev-4 and 4a. Both models remained in production largely unchanged for two decades until a taller version 5 appeared in the late 1970s. Final models reverted to the Kiev 4 style with cosmetic changes. Production ceased in the mid 1980s.

A range of Jupiter lenses, direct descendents of the original Zeiss Jena designs from 35mm to 135mm, were produced for Kiev cameras. The standard fitting is an f/2, 5.cm or 53mm Jupiter-8M, but an f/1.5, 50mm Jupiter-3 emulating a faster and famous Zeiss Sonnar, was also produced. Late Kiev 5s and some 4AM models are fitted with an f/1.8, 53mm Helios lens.