Kiev 2 (1954–1956)
The Kiev 2 started the Arsenal factory's long rangefinder line. It is a pre-war Contax II rebuilt from captured German tooling and spare parts. It was produced as a direct copy of the Zeiss Contax II, with a few minor improvements. The biggest one is an extra top shutter speed. The cloth-curtain focal-plane unit runs from 1/2 to 1/1250 sec., with the long-travel curtain action of the Contax design. The wind knob advances the film and cocks the shutter, and there's an automatic resettable frame counter.
The camera uses the Contax/Kiev bayonet mount. It has a combined viewfinder/rangefinder with parallax correction and an effective rangefinder base of 45mm, and flash sync via PC connector at 1/25 sec. It's a solid mechanical object - one collector site calls it "a beautifully built, mechanical marvel" - and it gives very sharp results with a good lens. It has quirks, though. The viewfinder is dim, the rangefinder patch is low contrast, the shutter is loud, and the film advance isn't reliably indexed to the frame counter. The most common problems today are sticky slow shutter speeds, often fixed by cleaning and re-lubricating the escapement, and rangefinder misalignment.
Production ran only from 1954 to 1956 at the Arsenal factory in Kiev. That short run makes the 2 less common than the later, more refined Kiev 4. The camera was intended for both civilian and military photographers. Spare parts are scarce, though many are interchangeable with the Contax II (not identical, but close). Expect to pay $100 - $150 for a working example in good condition. Kiev cameras in general remain undervalued next to their Contax counterparts.
- Type: 35mm rangefinder camera
- Shutter: Cloth focal-plane, B, 1/2–1/1250 sec.
- Mount: Contax RF bayonet (Kiev mount)
- Rangefinder base: 45mm effective
- Viewfinder magnification: approx. 0.67x
- Dimensions: 138×80×35mm
- Weight: 670g
High Fidelity (May 1963, p.12) ran a reader letter touching on the Kiev's arrival in the West. It was part of a broader curiosity about Soviet audio and camera gear during the period. The Kiev 2 was one of the few Soviet cameras to reach American enthusiasts in any number.
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