My most recent acquisition from glorious Russia Ukraine was a Kiev 88 manufactured in 1987, unopened and unused since then. Knowing that this is a bit of a gamble due to horror stories and notorious quality control at that period, this is still a direct Hasselblad copy and hence I gave into temptation. As with a majority of Russian cameras, mine was not without quirks, however I was pleased to not encounter the “walnut crunching” sound when I wind the shutter cocking mechanism.
My first shoot on this baby was with the lovely Lau, out in the wilderness we braved the heat, horrible rocky paths and prickly plants. It was quite a nicely lit sunny day so I was only using natural light (with a reflector from time to time) and my Fuji X100 (with a red filter) as my secondary camera. The Kiev was loaded with Kodak 400 Tri-X had a green filter attached and the personally developed and scanned results are below.
Here I noticed that my camera did indeed have some quirks, such as overlapping on both rolls where I assume the tension on the roll of 120 film to be too tight and hence not winding properly, in actual fact I discovered it was because Russian 120 film has a slightly thicker film backing and the cameras were constructed to compensate for such. There were also thin strips of overexposure from light leakage, almost being out in harsh direct sunlight it held up quite well. I’ll probably test it in different lighting conditions to see if the lightleak can be replicated or if it is only unique to bright sunny days.
Below are some shots from the Fuji X100 for comparison:
So! Seems like you’ve made it to the very end, and your efforts will not go unrewarded. Very relevant to this post and on the topic of strange non-mainstream photon capturing contraptions may I present:
SYDNEYCAMERASTYLE!
Much in the same stream of TokyoCameraStyle and the international collective (see PetaPixel article here), SCS exists as a recent joint collaboration between Marcus from PhotoMarcs and myself in an effort to document and capture the unique camera culture in Sydney!
I am planning of replacing (or complementing) my Minolta Autocord for a more SLR style medium format rig.
In your opinion, would you rather save up for a Hasselblad 503cm or a Bronica SQ-A or would the Kiev-88 satisfy my cravings for a 6×6 rig?
If you have the money for the glass then I would definitely recommend a Hasselblad, personally I have a 500C/M myself. The Kiev 88 has a few idiosyncrasies which add to the experience, one of teh best websites I came across whilst tossing up whether or not to buy a Kiev was http://www.kievaholic.com/ I skipped on the Bronica SQ-A because of the build quality, felt slightly more plasticy for my liking. In terms of operation speed is similar between the Hassie and the Kiev 🙂