Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/01/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Not quite on topic but this is the best place I can think of... I've used M's for a few years and have a fairly decent idea of how the camera works, and am become quite good at getting indifferent to poor photos out of it.... (Not the camera's fault...) But sometime in the next week or so the postlady is going to hand over to me a box from Yuri; in that box will be a Kiev 4AM with a Helios-103 on the front.... and this is a horse of a different feather to me. I'm also presuming that IF it comes with a manual it'll be in a language other than English. Is there anything particular about this camera that I need to know BEFORE it starts teaching me how it works? Things that wouldn't be reasonably obvious or intuitive to someone who's pretty familiar with handling manual/mechanical cameras in general -- known weaknesses, strange sequences or linkages, things that one needs to be careful NOT to do, that sort of thing? I think there was SOMETHING Russian that it was supposedly bad for the camera to change the shutter speed once you'd cocked the shutter, but that was years ago and I don't recall anything more... and I'm not sure I've ever actually laid eyes on a 35mm Kiev. I've read what I can find on the Web but, like car manuals, there are always things that "everyone knows" so nobody bothers to mention them... Thanks in advance.... -- R. Clayton McKee http://www.rcmckee.com Photojournalist rcmckee@rcmckee.com P O Box 571900 voice/fax 713/783-3502 Houston, TX 77257-1900 cell phone # on request