Kiev 5, Jupiter-8 NB

Kiev 5 rangefinder film camera with matching Jupiter-8 NB 2/50 lens, built-in light-meter and parallax corrected framelines.

The Kiev 5 was a bold attempt to improve the classic Contax design, which was copied in the Kiev models since 1948. The Kiev 5 is a substantial camera, large, heavy and well made. It looks like a regular Kiev rangefinder with a superstructure. The shutter and the body of the camera are indeed taken from a Kiev 4A of the same vintage. But the rest (the new top part) is very different.

The lens-mount have external bayonet and requires a normal lens with an external bayonet. A new flavor of the Jupiter-8 was designed - the Jupiter-8 NB. The lens is optically identical with the Jupiter-8M, but it looks very different. The aperture dial is now at the base of the lens. A lens shade is a part of the lens barrel.

The new rangefinder is probably the most significant and complex system of the Kiev 5. Its base is smaller than in Contax, but it is still very accurate. The image in the viewfinder is very large and bright with parallax corrected framelines for 50 mm lens inside the viewfinder. It seems that the outside borders of the viewfinder frame correspond to a 35 mm lens.