Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/01/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I have an old III, a Kiev II, and a 4AM. These are very robustly built machines with very stable rangefinders. The viewfinder is a little on the small side but not as small as a LTM. About the only thing that goes wrong is that the shutter ribbons wear out after thirty to fifty years of use. So, when the camera shows up, open the back with the bottom twist locks, take off the lens by pushing in the little chrome bar on the left side of the lens mount and rotating the lens clockwise. Wind the shutter, set the shutter speed to 2 and trip the shutter. You should be entertained by the famous Contax "wheeze". One curtain will slowly go down followed leisurly by the second. The gears should sound steady and even running. Now run up through the shutter speeds. The curtains should move faster. Try changing shutter speeds before or after winding, the curtains should not move while changeing speeds. (None of my cameras change timing whether I change speeds before or after I wind.) When you finish going up, go down in speed. The wind should get stiffer as you enter the slow speed arena. This is normal. Now, check the rangefinder by focusing on something a known distance. Is the distance on the focusing mount the same as the actual distance? Now focus on something a really long way away; clouds are usually good or something a mile or so away. Is infinity infinity? If all this checks out, then load a roll of film in the camera and shoot things near and far, longish shutter speeds and fast shutter speeds. Does the film look OK? Odds are the camera will be just fine and you will have a wonderful brick to shoot with. Think of it as a metal curtained K1000. Good luck and happy snaps. Don don.dory@gmail.com On 1/29/06, R. Clayton McKee <leica@rcmckee.com> wrote: > > 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 > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >