The Russian Contax: Kiev 4 & Jupiter 12

There is a camera that I love very much, but I haven’t been too lucky with. It’s the Soviet version of the legendary Zeiss Contax II, which in the 30’s and 40’s disputed the primacy to the eternal rival Leica in the 35m range. Immediately after the war, as partial compensation for damages, all equipment and materials present in the Zeiss factories were moved (along with a good number of technicians and specialized workers) behind the Iron Curtain, in Kiev, at the plant of Zavod Arsenal. Here, in the years immediately following the war, they were therefore produced the Kiev II (almost exactly the Contax); later underwent some changes in later models III and IV. Unlike Zorki and the Fed, that “copied” the Leica models from afar … these Kiev, in fact, can not be considered copies but, delocalized productions …

TEST ADOX CMS 20 DEVELOPED IN ARS IMAGO FD (PART TWO)

Yellow Filter Used

Okay, I will confess: I did it again! I went again against the rules and developed once more the Adox CMS 20 film with a conventional developer (Ars Imago-Fd) instead of the dedicated one. The reasons which lead to this are widely mentioned in this post, which describes the results of my first test with this combination. As reported in the conclusions, I had promised myself to make a new test exposing for a lower speed than the nominal 20 Iso, in order to have more open shadows and to evaluate the yield of the intermediate grey tones and highlights using these new parameters. Thanks to the cooperation of Ars-Imago, I had the chance to try some other film rolls.