The Kiev-10: The ‘Soviet Cybertruck’

By Roman Yarovitsyn

A careful look to the Soviet photographic equipment leads to the inevitable conclusion that all known models of cameras and lenses were, whether or not, copied from already outdated foreign analogues.

An exact copy of the German Leica II “FED” laid the foundation for decades of committed copying. After WWII, the whole “Contax” system was received as reparations, which turned into the “Kiev” range produced at the “Arsenal” plant. Later the Swedish “Hasselblad 1600F” was copied there under the name “Salyut“.

All subsequent developments were at best “influenced” by foreign cameras, but by the beginning of the 1970s they were hopelessly lagging behind global standards. Even the swan song of Soviet camera manufacturing, the Almaz-103, ultimately turned out to be an unsuccessful copy of outdated Nikon F2. The “Kometa” which deep impressed the Western public in fact only had a production run of three copies, and after a brilliant debut at the Bruxels exhibition in 1958, it sank into oblivion.

Only Soviet citizens locked inside the country believed in the incomparable domestic technology, and even they began to suspect something before the start of Perestroika.

However, the Soviet Union did produce one camera that was completely unlike anything else and, oddly enough, was ahead of its Western competitors. Moreover, it was mass-produced for several years and became the basis of an entire photographic system! This miracle of engineering is called the Kiev-10. Oddly enough, the originality of the camera is almost unknown either in Russia or abroad.

Apparently, to understand this priority, one needs a thorough knowledge of the technical capabilities of that era and a careful comparison of the dates of key models release. In the West, it is generally accepted that the first SLR camera with automatic exposure control was the Japanese Konica Auto-Reflex, which was released by Konishiroku in December 1965.

But the Kiev-10 with the same trap-needle AE was released by the “Arsenal” plant at least several months, or even a year earlier. The official date of production start is 1965, but there is no more precise date anywhere.This is typical for defense plants, such as Arsenal that produced photographic and movie equipment in the USSR. At the same time, there are known copies of the Kiev-10 marked with a production date of 1964. Even if the first production batch left Arsenal in November 1965, Kiev can be rated as origin. This fact let us to understand that all technical solutions implemented in the Soviet camera were developed independently and earlier than the Konica.

The automatic aperture works in both cameras with the same trap-needle principle and does not use any microchips, transistors or other electronics, which modern photographic equipment of course cannot do without. The most complex electrical element of the Kiev-10 and Konica is the galvanometer, which measures the photocurrent of the light meter. Then the mechanics come into play.

Galvanometers in both SLRs are equipped with not one, but two connected needles. One of them shows the measured aperture in the viewfinder, and the other – wider and stronger – serves as the lock of the actuator, which is activated by the shutter release button. It was the tight button of the Konica, uncommon for Japanese SLRs that made me remember the Kiev-10 with the same long and heavy stroke of the shutter release key.

When the shutter release button is started motion, the second needle is blocked by the brake, and a stepped cam begins to move to touch it. Down (in the Kiev) or up (in the Konica). At the same time, the diaphragm drive begins to move through a system of levers. Depending on the position of the needle immediately before pressing the button, the cam rests against it with one or another step, stopping the movement of the iris drive in accordance with the measured exposure.

Further movement of the button until release the shutter occurs independently of the AE mechanism. This is how, with the help of simple and reliable levers and springs, we get what is known today as “shutter priority AE”. When the Kiev and Konica were released the term was rather more romantic: “Electric Eye”. A slick cam could provide stepless adjustment of exposure, as in a modern DSLRs, but a stepped cam is better for reliable needle trapping.

Even more surprising for a modern photographer will be the principle of coupling the light meter of these cameras with the shutter speed, aperture and film sensitivity. For this purpose, the galvanometer is mounted on bearings and can rotate together with the needle. The rotation is carried out by a toothed sector attached to the galvanometer body and coupled with a differential gearbox.

Why would you need a gearbox in the camera, you ask? It is a mechanical computer. Have you ever heard of the Antikythera mechanism created in the 2nd Century BC? The gears of the Kiev and Konica are, of course, simpler, and they have been preserved much better. But before the advent of radio tubes and transistors, all computers were mechanical, including the Norden bombsight and the Turing machine.

The Konica gearbox is connected to the shutter speed/ASA dial and the lens speed detecting lever by two thin threads stretched across the entire camera through several blocks. The pulleys of these threads, through a system of gears with different transmission ratios, turn the galvanometer so that the position of the needle corresponds to the correct aperture value. The Kiev does not have these threads because the shutter speed and ASA/ГОСТ switching mechanism is located next to the galvanometer.

However, neither Arsenal nor Konishiroku were first out of this particular trap. The trap-needle AE principle with a galvanometer has been known since 1938, when it was used in the very first shutter-priority AE Kodak Six 20 folding camera. It was so-so in practice, but you can’t throw words out of a song: an automatic is an automatic.

By the end of the 1950s, such automation was already working in most amateur cameras with a non-removable lens, and in 1960, the first SLR camera, the Royer Savoyflex III automatic with shutter priority AE, appeared in France. Even TTL-metered AE was implemented in the Topcon Uni SLR already in 1964!

What is the achievement of this Kiev and Konica then? Here’s what. The Kiev and Konica are based on a focal plane shutter. The Savoyflex and Topcon, like other early SLR automatics, was equipped with a behind-the-lens leaf shutter, and this imposes insurmountable limitations on the optical capabilities of the camera.

In addition to the very small available range of focal lengths, such SLRs were not usable for macro photography without additional close-up lens. Moreover, their lenses cannot be extended too far and focused closer than one meter otherwise the leaf shutter will shade the edges of the picture. Long-focus lenses are even more “far-sighted” and incapable for close portraiture. Such cameras are not suitable for professional photography.

The focal plane shutter is considered the classic format for SLRs because it does not impose any optical limitations. But at the same time, coupling the aperture with the exposure meter for interchangeable lenses turns into a real challenge. Therefore, the main thing that needed to be developed for both cameras was a new lens mount.

Konishiroku improved their F-mount by adding the ring into a female part to limit the stroke of the winking iris. This ring directly connected to the stepped cam and was equipped with astopper lug. The automatic mode switches by turning the diaphragm ring further than largest f-stop in the moment the shutter is released. When the shutter is released and the mirror rises up, it levers free the aperture closing spring. But it doesn’t close completely, because at the middle of the lever stroke it is blocked by a stopper lug. Accurate location of this “middle” depends on the stepped cam and needle. So, the iris is closing exactly to the measured f-stop. Arsenal followed the beaten path of SLRs with a leaf shutter: the aperture of the interchangeable lenses in such systems is controlled from the camera, which simplifies a coupling.

At the same time, the lenses lack an aperture ring at all. The Kiev lenses are built with the same principle: the barrel is equipped with only a focusing ring. Instead, the camera body got a wheel for selecting the aperture and switching to automatic mode.

The result of the development was a completely unique mount “Kiev-Automat”, created from scratch. There was simply nothing to copy it from, and it is worth admitting that technically it is made quite competently. The only downside is that the shutter release button of the Kiev-10 not only activates trap-needle gears, but also closes the iris to the working value. This affects not so much the pressing tension, but the complexity of the lenses, the diaphragm of each of which must close literally from a blowing onto the lever.

In the Konica, the wink iris is closed by a separate spring, common for Japanese SLRs. However, the button stroke did not become softer with this, and is quite comparable with its Ukrainian cousin. So the solution of the “Arsenal” could be considered simpler and more beautiful, but the shutter button of the latest models of Autoreflexes has become much softer due to the additional spring, cocked by the trigger together with the shutter.

The Kiev retained an unobvious advantage: an autonomous selenium light meter instead of the more modern and sensitive Konica’s photoresistor. As a result, the Soviet camera works without any batteries at all, and if the selenium has not oxidised over 60 years, it still works even today. However, this advantage just reflects the general trend of the 1960s, when pros refused to see any electric cells in their equipment, relying only on springs and hand strength.

Both cameras perfectly fit into these ideas of beauty: their shutters work without any batteries. The photographer with a pocket light meter will not even notice problems due to dead Konica batteries. Isn’t such a system wonderful? It remained in the Autoreflex family and AR-mount until the 1980s, successfully competing with fashionable electronic brains on flexible printed circuit boards.

Just two years after the appearance of the first camera, the Autoreflex T with behind-the-lens metering was released. By the way, our photos show the insides of this very camera, which was produced for the domestic Japanese market under the FTA name. The principle of automation has not changed, and everything inside is the same as in the first model. It took Arsenal almost a decade to make the same transition: the Kiev-15 with a TTL meter replaced the Kiev-10 only in 1973.

But the most interesting and at the same time controversial thing about the “Kiev-10” is it’s unusual retro-futuristic design, which is unlike anything else. Somebody taking a look at this SLR may be reminded of the Tesla Cybertruck, designed half a century later. In fact, this camera is a real design concept, and this alone is attractive. The controls are “disguised” so that they are not visible to outsiders, and the rewind roulette is recessed into the camera’s bottom so that you can’t find it without manual.

The downside of this “futurism,” of course, is its inconvenience. The camera really falls out of your hands if you’re not used to it, and it is probably the most cumbersome of all Soviet 35mm SLRs. Photographers had a good reason to call the camera a “flatiron”, disliking its angularity. One more surprise lies inside the camera and absolutely uncommon for cameras all over the world. This is the fan-bladed metallic shutter, designed by Alexander Gelgar and I. Batyuta. Such a shutter was used in only two cameras: the Kiev-10 and Kiev-15. (I wrote about this more detail in the Kosmo Foto article about shutters.)

Compared to other Soviet cameras, the Kiev-10 stood out for its many advantages: a large and bright viewfinder that displays the frame almost entirely, a full range of shutter speeds, and a light meter needle in the viewfinder. All this was exotic for Soviet photographers in 1964, trust me! Another advantage of the camera was an instant return mirror. This crosses out the generally accepted idea of ​​the primacy of the Zenit-E, the first batch of which was released in December 1965, at the same time as the Konica.

The Kiev was also not deprived of interchangeable lenses, which cannot be said about any of the many failed projects by the Krasnogorsk and LOMO plants. All Zenits equipped with a bayonet lens mount instead of an ordinary M42 thread remained with a single standard lens if there was no adapter to use threaded lenses. The same applies to the Start and Almaz.

The “Kiev-Automat” family was equipped with a full range of interchangeable lenses, which were easy to purchase. Moreover, macro extension ring existed and even M39 thread adapter! That’s why the “Arsenal” cameras were criticised, but still bought. They can still be found today, so I would strongly recommend that fans of Soviet photography equipment buy at least one for their collection. And those who collect Konica Autoreflex SLRs should feel obliged to purchase a Kiev-10 for the next shelf, as a deserving counterpart from the other side of the Iron Curtain.