The Kiev 60 - Camera Review!

This camera is a tank.  I weighs upwards of 5 pounds and almost requires two hands to carry it.  This camera is one of the few medium format SLR cameras ever made.  The Kiev 60 is a Russian/Ukrainian copy camera similar in style to a Pentax 6x7 although the Kiev 60 shots 6x6 square images  This is old school photography at it's best.  The camera is so large it attracts attention when taken out in public.  It's quite simple to use, with only shutter speed, aperture, stop down preview and film advance.  This model came with a waist level finder and a TTL eye level finder.  I opted not to put batteries in to use the TTL metering and simply use a hand held reflected meter for more accurate readings.  There is no self timer, although there is a tripod mount which really helps take the weight off.

There is a cold shoe, but no hot shoe.  Since the cold shoe simply holds the flash via the flash shoe you must use the PC sync socket on the front of the camera to connect the flash via cord.  Inconvenient yes, but this is an old camera from Russia. The flash sync speed is only 1/30.  This impedes things a bit as using flash outdoors forces you to maximum sync speed of 1/30, unless you are using 100 ASA film, you are not going to have much control over depth of field.  The focus is a bit slow, but that could be related to the fact that at 40 years old and looking through bifocals I have an inherently hard time anyway.  The lens is an 80mm 2.8 and provides beautiful bokeh when shot wide open. The camera makes an audible "clunk" at the shutter firing and often if your subject is human, a comment is made about the quality of the shutter sound.  The film is very easy to load with a red dot on the inside to indicate the start mark alignment on the film paper backing.  The transport is smooth and the roll is tight when removed from the exposed side of the camera. There are no visible light leaks on the film with this particular camera, which is always a concern with cameras of this age. This camera came with the original box and instruction manual all in Russian.

This camera only leaves a small gap between frames, around 1/8 of inch. After the 12th frame, it appears on the film itself [after processing] that there is room for one more frame. I tested this theory on a roll of film (not processed as of this post) by firing another shot off at the K mark on the frame counter which indicates the end has been reached. The camera does fire after the 12th frame so when I process the film I update this post at the bottom to indicate how that test went.

Here is the camera with a remote wireless flash transmitter attached to the cold shoe which is plugged into the X-sync.

Here is a shot taken with the Kiev.  1/30 @ 2.8  on Kodak Tri-X.  Processed in Sprint Standard developer.

This image taken on the Kiev 60. Available light. 1/30 @ 2.8. Processed in C-41 "hobby kit".