The Kiev 30

The Kiev 30 is the Minolta 16's ugly Soviet sister (produced from 1975-87 at the Arsenal factory, then Soviet Ukraine).  It takes Minolta 16mm cassettes or its own special cassettes which do not fit in the Minolta 16's due to the smaller take-up spool;  they were redesigned by Kiev to hold more film.  The Kiev 30 takes 25 13x17mm exposures (as opposed to 20 exposures in the Minolta's smaller 10x14mm format).  Despite the camera's larger format the viewfinder is identical to the Minolta16 so you only see a fraction of the final image area.  The main improvement in this camera over the Minolta 16 is the range focusing 23mm f3.5-11  lens  (no need to fiddle with supplementary close-up lenses).  Another nice feature is a well designed exposure estimator dial on the back of the camera.  The camera has a PC flash attachment and shutter speeds of 1/30, 1/60 and 1/200 of a second.  The fit and finish of these cameras is actually quite good for a Soviet made camera and mechanically the Kiev 30's are built to about the same standards as the Minolta 16's, but you certainly won't impress anyone with this little clunky black brick.  

How good can this camera perform?  See some examples in the galleries listed below:

Kodak ImageLink FS microfilm photos 09.04.00

[More Coming Soon]

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