Catalogue information
In World War II, the Soviets confiscated all camera parts of the then East German Carl Zeiss factory, so that the factory "Zavod Arsenal" in Kiev in 1948 continued to produce the Zeiss Contax cameras under the name KIEV (KNEB ). Except for a few minor exterior details, the Russian Kiev 4 is an exact copy of the legendary Zeiss Contax IIIa from 1950. The Kiev 4 is a large and heavily built metal rangefinder camera with a mechanical vertical sloping metal louvre shutter, which runs surprisingly quietly. The interchangeable Jupiter 8M f: 2.0 / 53mm standard lens is another straight Russian copy of the famous Zeiss Sonnar f: 2.0 / 5cm, which insiders claim the Jupiter lens outperforms the original Zeiss Sonnar. The extremely long distance of 90mm between the two measurement windows makes the Kiev (and Contaxen) one of the most accurate rangefinder cameras ever built. Like the original Contaxes, the Kiev rangefinder cameras are also very popular collector cameras. The blue imitation snakeskin cover is not original.
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