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CJ
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 03, 2005 - 04:08 pm: | 
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Hi All,
I thought I'd enquire about the ubiquitous Contax and Leica copies that one sees on Ebay all the time.
Are they worth the typically short money that is asked for them?
I'd be interested in trying one, but for the advice I've heard that they're really poorly constructed(the bodies, that is) and dealing with a seller in eastern Europe doesn't particularly instill confidence...
Has anybody purchased one of these? What did you think of the quality (or lack thereof)?
-CJ |
Glenn Middleton
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 03, 2005 - 05:59 pm: |
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As in all things you get what you pay for.I have two Zorki based examples which looked good and with a little work have given me a lot of amusment.Nice tidy engineered jewels on the inside, they are not.Hang a bit of half good glass on the front and the 12x10 B&W look b....y good.However I take great exception to the comments about Eastern European sellers.Why should they be any more dishonest than a seller from the UK or USA?I have been short changed three times on Ebay, 1xUK and 2xUSA,enough said.My dealings with sellers in China and Eastern Europe have always been easy and produced exactly what was advertised. |
CJ
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 03, 2005 - 07:29 pm: |
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Excellent; thank you Glenn. My reluctance in dealing with overseas sellers comes from mere geography: 1.) I'm guessing shipping would be priceyy and 2.) one has little-to-no recourse if your credit card gets 'jacked by an unscrupulous middle man, or you're shipped a lump of metal and glass that's useful only as a door stop. Legal protections only extend to the borders of the country you're in. :-\ |
Winfried
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 12:16 am: |
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I have a FED1g (last model), I did not buy it via ebay but from a local dealer. The FED1 is well-made and keeps up in workmanship with my pre-war LeicaIIIa. It had almost no traces of wear outside, but one shutter ribbon is either very weak or twisted during assembly, however, the shutter runs sufficiently precisely even for slide film. The standard Industar lenses are not bad, a bit soft in the corners when wide open. On fleamarkets and camera swaps I have seen quite a few samples of the Zorki1 and FED1 with sluggish shutters. The shutter should run crisp, with a just audible delay between the curtain starts at 1/25, and the second curtain should close without any delay at the B setting. The viewfinder/rangefinder became very crisp and clear after a good cleaning (could not remove the viewfinder eyepiece, so I had to clean it through the front windows).
I have no experience with the Contax copies. They share the same complicated shutter design with the original ones, so check if the shutter is running smoothly. Some say that items from the 50s and early 60s are better made than the late ones from the 70s. |
WernerJB
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 03:07 am: |
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What sense is there in so-called "copies" when the engravings ("Deuteche ... " instead of "Deutsche ... ") on them contain a lot of spelling and other mistakes? There are far more copies, old and newly decorated fake "gold" Leicas and would be snakeskin Contaxes around in the wild than their genuinely shining examples. The net is full of advice about them, both pro and con, and if any "serious" collector thinks these "aryanized" Russian-Polish-German-Swedish co-productions are a must nothing can or should stop him from buying them: collectors usually go for unusual or weird crap. Would I buy such flotsam and jetsam? No, of course not, for the same reason that I definitely will never buy fake Rolexes, most "exclusive" items for wannabes, if anything! |
Mark Pearce
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 05:55 am: |
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CJ;
What you want to do is join one of the on-line forums and get feedback on both the cameras themselves and folks to do business with. I'd start with http://www.beststuff.com/forum/list.php?f=21.
Nice people and lots of data.
I think the Contax copies are a better deal than the Leica copies (especially the Kiev 2 and 3), but I've had a bunch of both and currently have a Zorki 1 w/Jupiter 8 (F2 Sonnar clone), a Kiev 3, and a Kiev 3a.
The trick is getting a good one, Soviet 'quality control' being socialist dogma.
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rick oleson
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 06:19 am: |
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I would avoid the ones that have fake German (or, recenty, British or Japanese) engraving on them; at best, these have been disassembled and tampered with to elevate their selling prices. A regular Zorki 1, though, is built well enough to give good service with its simple design (which is very close to the Leica II). Kievs have generally better build quality and they had the active support of the Zeiss Ikon technical staff in setting them up after the war; on the other hand, they are a much more complex design, so in the end their reliability is probably about on a par with the Zorkis. Both are a good deal for the money generally being asked, but both may need some sort of attention for good results (of course, you could say that about their Leica and Contax counterparts too)
: ) = |
Ezio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 06, 2005 - 05:04 am: |
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All the above comments make sense. As a personal suggestion, I would go for a Kiev (Contax clone) trying to avoid the models with built-in meter (it would most likely not work) and preferably trying to get the older camera you can and certainly not after 1972. The production year is given by the first two digits of the serial number on the accessory shoe. Also, I would dare to suggest that an Eastern European seller with a good feedback is arguably the safest bet on ebay. These people depend on their sales for a living, and thus simply cannot afford negative feedback. You can trust their description to a much larger extent than the typical "I don't know anything about cameras" crook. If they describe a camera as being 100% functional, almost certainly it is. Of course, guys trying to unload Kievs, FEDs or Zorkis with false Contax or Leica names are a completely different affair. |
CJ
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 11:20 pm: |
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Aweome. Thank you all for the information and suggestions in your above posts! |
Tony Duell
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 08, 2005 - 07:22 am: |
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A few comments (I have a fair number of these cameras)..
The Kiev is a very close copy of the pre-war Contax II, but not as well made. So close that most parts interchange, and that the instructions in 'All you need to know about the design and repair of Russian cameras' were useful for fixing my Contax. I am told that at one time if you sent a Contax in for repair to an independant repair shop, it got Kiev parts fitted (because the originals were unobtainable). They are that close. Of course this means the Kiev suffers from the well-known shutter tape problem. That can be fixed if you can get the tape, but it's not easy, and most tapes you can get are OK if the camera is going to sit on a shelf and be demonstrated occasionally, they don't really last long enough to use the camera seriously.
The FED 1 and Zorki 1 (almost indentical) are pretty close to the Leica II. They are not as well made, of course. A simple, reliable design. Later FEDs and Zorkis were not copies of any Leica (in particular, the slow-speed mechanism if present is very different to Leica's, the Russian cameras have all the speeds on one dial, which none-the-less spins round during winding and release). These cameras a pretty easy to work on and have few major problems.
Don't worry about the internal meter. These cameras are not automatic. If the meter doesn't work, you can still use the camera with an external meter, which is what you'd do if there wasn't a meter at all, right. The value might be lower if part of the camera is defective, but you can still take photographs.
What would I go for? Either a Kiev, becuase it's such an unusual shutter, or a later Fed with the slow-speed mechanism (which is essential for me). |
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