Kiev 60 review by Richard de Bulat
I took out a Kiev 60 medium Format camera with a Volna 80mm Standard f2.8 lens. The lens is quite good, fairly sharp and with good contrast in most lighting situations. I took a walk from Millbay up to the top of town, finishing at my old favourite, The Barcode lighting was pretty mixed with short bursts of bright sunshine, frequently clouding over and 4 stops of light difference with every change.
I used the camera with a prism finder and my hand held light meter, although there is a light meter in the prism head which is more or less accurate, but I wasn’t really looking for 18% grey, I was looking for heavy shadows, which was a bit hit and miss. I used Delta 400 and developed the film in Ilfosol 3.
A common complaint about the old Kiev 60’s is variable spacing between frames which can mean the loss of the last frame, but I had no such issue. I find that if you keep the film tight and hit the mark accurately at the loading stage, this is not usually a problem. Using the camera is like using an SLR only one that is considerably heavier. I used a camera strap, but found it necessary to hold the camera in both hands to avoid too much neck strain. If I had a longer strap, I would have hung it crossways from one shoulder, which usually helps.
The shutter makes a positive and satisfying sound; a general rule of thumb is to set the shutter speed 125th sec or more to avoid potential camera shake or mirror slap affecting the film plane, but I took one shot at an 1/8th sec, with the camera rested on a railing with no problem, so I think a firm hold or use of a tripod can discount any concerns in this area.
Being medium format, depth of field is quite different from that of 35mm cameras and f5.6 gives a fairly shallow d.o.f. so f8 or f11 is required for front to back sharpness and at f2.8 depth of field offers a very narrow range of sharpness.
These cameras are good value for money for medium format and despite it being called the poor man’s Pentax 67, it’s not – it’s square format for a start, so is purposed and used in quite a different way. Assuming you get a good one, the cameras are mechanically sound and offer good image quality and reliability at a reasonable price. This is definitely a camera to consider when getting into medium format photography.
