Kiev 35A
The Kiev 35A is almost an exact copy of the Minox 35 EL; 35mm lens, shutter 1/500-1 sec., .9m-infinity, aperture priority, ISO 25-800 and flash sync at 1/30. The main difference is that the Kiev 35A is made in the former Soviet Ukraine and has a Korsar lens instead of the Minotar. The Kiev 35A also does not have a battery test button. It does come with a special battery sleeve so you can use 4 button cells instead of the hard to find PX27.
The good news is that the Kiev 35A only costs around $35 brand new and is capable of taking photos nearly as sharp as the highly respected Minox 35's. The bad news is that there is nearly zero quality control at the factory that produces Kiev 35A's and a high percentage of them don't function correctly before they leave the factory. Common problems are dead shutters and terrible light leaks. My Kiev 35A came complete with horrendous light leaks, but the shutter worked perfectly. I mucked around trying to fix my light leaks by strategically placing black tape around the camera and got the camera to be reliable enough for very casual shooting (i.e.. when I didn't really care if the photos came out or not) and got some very nice crisp photos in between the light spoiled shoots. Then I came across the thread on Martin Tai's Minox site Mystery of KIEV 35A light leak and found the correct solution in Stephen Brown's post; the entire back of the camera leaks light! This should make sense because even the first run of Minox 35 ELs leaked light through their backs. The obvious solution is to simply repaint the back of the camera black (shown here). While the actual camera is fairly well made, it is sprayed with the ugliest puke-green texture coating so the new black back is only an improvement. After painting the back of my camera I have had zero light leaks.
The other peculiarity of the camera is that it actually has semi-transparent plastic shutter blades. They appear to be metallic, but if you go in a darkened room and shine a very bright light through the back of the camera you can see light going right through the shutter blades. With my camera I am careful not to keep it open for extended periods of time or to point it at the sun and by taking these precautions I have suffered no fogging of my film, but the opacity of the shutter blades is probably quite variable so it may be more of a problem for other users.
All in all, owing to the direct rip-off of a very elegant Minox design, the Kiev 35A is perfect joy to use. Below are links to some of my Kiev 35A galleries:
Florence - Shots from Florence AZ.
Aqua Caliente - Shots from Aqua Caliente park, Tucson AZ.