Kiew aus meiner Sammlung von Altkameras

Kiew aus meiner Sammlung von Altkameras

Kiev der Sovietijscher Contax......

The Kiev camera - history
The Kiev 35mm interchangeable lens rangefinder film camera is one of the best known of Soviet era camera brands in the West and many are still used by photography enthusiasts around the world.

Seven years after the launch of the Leica 1 at the Leipzig Fair, Carl Zeiss announced the first Contax, a 35mm camera with a coupled rangefinder. 1932 also saw the launch of the Leica II featuring a rangefinder.

The Contax was larger, heavier and more expensive than the Leica, but great resolving power and high contrast of the 5cm Tessar, later 5cm Sonnar and majority of the different focal length objectives produced for the system in the 1930s and 40s found favour with many professionals. The camera was manufactured in Dresden with lenses produced at Jena.

At the end of WWII, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Dresden factory and trucked - under the war reparations scheme - the dies and machinery used to make the Zeiss camera to the Kiyev Zavod Arsenal in the Ukraine. By 1947, a modified Contax II camera was in production with a new name; Kiev-2. The same camera was also produced at Jena and called the Jena Contax II