The Art of Photography: Exploring the World of Medium Format Cameras

As an enthusiast of medium format cameras, I have always been fascinated by their unique characteristics and capabilities. In this episode, we will delve into the world of one such camera, the Kiev 88. This Soviet-era camera has gained a cult following among photographers, and for good reason. Its ability to produce stunning images with its large format sensor makes it a coveted collector's item.

One of the challenges that comes with shooting medium format cameras is the shutter curtain, which can be prone to jarring motion when using slow shutter speeds. This is because the camera's mechanical system can create a sudden, sharp motion that blurs the image. To mitigate this issue, photographers often use long shutter speeds, which can result in beautiful, creamy bokeh and soft focus effects.

The Kiev 88 is one of several medium format cameras that have been produced over the years. Its design is similar to other models, with a few key differences. One notable difference is the shutter curtain, which is made of cloth rather than metal. This change reduces the jarring motion caused by slow shutter speeds and creates a smoother, more even exposure.

Another significant difference between the Kiev 88 and its predecessor is the lens mount. The camera uses a modified version of the Pentacon lens mount, which allows it to accommodate a range of lenses from other manufacturers, including Zeiss. This feature makes the Kiev 88 an attractive option for photographers who want to use high-quality lenses with their medium format cameras.

However, one potential drawback of the Kiev 88 is its cost. When purchased directly from the manufacturer or distributor in the US, the camera can become increasingly expensive. As a result, many photographers turn to alternative options, such as the Pentacon system or even Hasselblad.

For those looking to purchase a Kiev 88, it's essential to be aware of the potential for scarcity and increasing costs. The Russian manufacturer, Kiev, closed its plant in Russia in 2009, and it is rumored that the US distributor may have only enough stock to last a few more years. This makes the camera a potentially collectible item, especially if you're willing to hunt down a good deal.

When shopping for a Kiev 88, be sure to look for the kit version, which includes a leather box that doubles as a camera bag. This feature can add significant value to your purchase and make it easier to transport your equipment. You may also find film backs included with your purchase, which can be a nice bonus.

In recent years, I've had the opportunity to use a Kiev 88 and was impressed by its capabilities. The camera's large format sensor produces stunning images with incredible depth and detail. The long shutter speeds required for motion blur can result in beautiful, abstract effects that add texture and interest to your photographs.

One of my favorite ways to use the Kiev 88 is to capture images with a slow shutter speed, allowing me to create a sense of movement and energy in my photos. This technique requires careful planning and execution, but the results are well worth the effort.

Another aspect of the Kiev 88 that I appreciate is its portability. Despite being a medium format camera, it's surprisingly lightweight and compact, making it easy to take with you on location shoots or when traveling.

As we continue to explore the world of photography, I encourage you to consider the Kiev 88 as an option for your next project. With its unique combination of features and capabilities, this camera has the potential to produce stunning images that will leave a lasting impression on your audience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneverybody welcome back to another episode of the art of photography this is our daily vlog edition for now at least I may be merging these two pretty soon I'm not sure yet either way today we're going to talk about medium format cameras in inexpensive ways to get into medium format if you're not familiar I've done podcasts in the past and put some links below but film formats 35-millimeter is popular as it was for years and years was always considered an amateur film format mainly was because of the size of the negative that you get me and it's very small compared to something like large format which is four by five four inches by five inches which is a really large negative or eight by ten which is really large medium format sits in the medium and usually six centimeters by six centimeters square is the standard format although there are some rectangular formats as well so you can find cameras that are six by seven six by nine in fact a couple episodes ago I showed you my Voigtlander besa which is a six by nine so it's a rectangular format it looks more like 35 in a way even though you're getting a much bigger negative the obvious benefit to having a really large negative is that you have more information and more detail that goes on to that negative so you can get really large prints you can get really sharp prints really clear where's 35 millimeter has always been considered a little bit of an amateur or inferior format even though and this is a different topic and I've talked about before but the 35 millimeter changed the game as far as portability and how photographers could make images and the size however medium format does have some advantages now the only camera i've talked about ever on this podcast that's medium format other than my voice landers really the whole go and I do still consider the Holga to be the cheapest way to get into medium format now it depends on what kind of images you want to make in fact I was telling somebody in an e-mail the other day who had asked me the question about getting into medium format the Holga because the lens is just a very crude single element plastic meniscus lens tends to be very inconsistent so every camera has a little bit different look I personally like that you get the big negative you get the detail my not this one the mein hoga that I shoot on that was modified by Randy at Holga mods again link below Randy does awesome work and you get some really fun Hogan's they're going to cost you a little more than $30.00 but you can do some cool modifications to them you know bulb exposure having cable release things like that but the hold is great but generally you're going to have more of a blurry artistic kind of look to things in general I have seen some pretty sharp Holga lenses but they still have imperfections it's a cheap way to get into medium format but if you are interested in going a little further in doing something one of the cameras that I bought years ago is this one this is a Kiev 88 it is another Russian camera this one is medium format it's complete clunker and I actually love it I don't shoot on it as much anymore but at one point I really wanted to get into really sharp image making with medium format couldn't afford a Hasselblad and so the Kiev 88 is actually not a bad alternative and I'll tell you why the key of 88 is actually a Russian copy of an older model Hasselblad and it's actually specifically the Hasselblad 1600 f I think which I've never actually seen when they're collector cameras and it was a little bit crude and not as refined as the later CM models and the like but it's very similar it's modular design you can take off the lens in fact the lenses are interchangeable and the cool thing is that you can get you know when you consider what the cost would be for a Hasselblad system with a bunch of lenses you can get into these Russian cameras much more inexpensively particularly with the wide angle and the fisheye lenses so rather than having to pay six thousand dollars for a lens which you would with a Hasselblad line you can pay a lot less usually I haven't ever bought one of the wide-angle and a camera what they go for I have to look on ebay but but anyway let me show you this before I put it back together the the whole idea with the with the kiev 88 is modular and design just like the Hasselblad so you can actually get extra film backs these come off so this right here is the body you have a viewfinder at the top there are alternative view finders and I'll show you in a little bit here and the the biggest difference between a model modern Hasselblad cameron this is a little frustrating the key of ATA is this big metal shutter back here and the metal shutter is clunky my friend Andy calls it Nutcracker because it makes such a horrible sound when you open and close it they're not quiet cameras then you know they're very obtrusive but you know for the fraction of a cost of a hospital I think you can get into a basic body viewfinder and back in eighty millimeter lens for probably $250 I'm guessing something like that I haven't looked at the ebay prices in a long time I they may have come down and so I think what I paid for this one but anyway interchangeable lenses which is very nice the standard 80 millimeter lens focal length of 2.8 and it's it's an all around you know it's not quite the zeiss lenses that come on the Hasselblad maybe not quite that tech sharp and people who tend to look very closely I've been told you know there are big differences in the contrast and having shot on both you know I don't know these are good enough and I tend to manipulate a little bit in the darkroom and a little bit in Photoshop so with levels and things to the contrast of the lens is not something I'm is picky about but it does have a shutter curtain and that's a big difference the Hasselblad 1600 F had a shutter curtain - I don't know whether it was metal or not but either way the modern Hasselblad Zahl have leaf shutters that live inside the lens so they're much quieter and then the biggest difference and this is the biggest really the only gripe I would have about this cameras you do have to learn how to get around a few things and one of them is particularly this was probably eight or nine years ago it's I live in Texas it's extremely hot and I was being pretty prolific with my photo taking that summer and a lot of it I just decided to start doing a lot of my botanical stuff a lot of the flowers that was shooting a lot of still lifes with vegetables and fruit and the like that sense of funny to say but anyway but I was getting good results and I was using the key of a lot at that time now one thing though if you're doing very moody lighting it's very low lighting you've got the tripod set and you've stopped way down to like f11 or something and you're going to get a really sharp photo or you're using a macro lens filter and you know maybe you have to stop down to f-22 or the like of the problem that you have is with really shutter slow really slow shutter speeds easy for me to say is that the massive shutter curtain that's made out of metal in there will pop on you and it makes a loud noise and it also physically shakes the camera so I ended up having a lot blurred areas on my images so it needs an adjustment the lens is a little loose but anyway very easy to deal with I got a strap for this one so you can take it on the go it's a very heavy camera essentially it is an SLR camera so if you pop open the top viewfinder and look in there you're able to see compose through the lens which you know is different than a TLR you can get your focus set you can get your your this one does not have a meter in it you can get them with a metered eye level prism which replaces this it just slides out when you take the back off and that enables you to treat more like an SLR as far as like you know your composing and those do have a meter in it the meter kind of tells you what you need to set it at so it's not a fast meter and certainly not modern by any stretch of the imagination anyway the Kiev 80 it's a very cool camera also has inside I'm afraid I'd open it yeah there's a young you see that open up or not but you can pop this up here and you get a little magnifying glass for extra you know sensitive sharp focusing if you really want to get detail but they work really great I believe there's a set of bellows available for this anyway it's a whole camera system and like I said for a fraction of the cost that's going to cost you to get into a household blog this is an excellent alternative flash does work on it and they have interchangeable back so you could if you are out on the street shooting on location you could have one back loaded with one film type and then second back look you know like if I had black and white film in this back I could have another one in my bag that has color slide film or something in it and you can go back and forth which is pretty cool anyway it's a clunky camera the design there I'm not really fragile but I have had them break on me in the past and that's no fun this is actually the second one I've owned the first one just locked up after taking a picture one time and I would never able to get it unfrozen I even you know because I banged it against the concrete trying to unlock it and destroy the whole thing but anyway I really shouldn't talk about that here this is about camera love and not destruction but anyway all that aside anyway the shutter speeds basically you have a bulb setting 125th of a second whether you have some slower settings - so it's bulb 2 seconds 4 seconds 8 seconds excuse me bulb half a second quarter second eighth of a second fifteenth of a second 30 just goes up and stops up to a thousand as your top shutter speed on that so anyway it does have a stop down so you can do depth of field preview and like I said they're really a nice alternative to Hasselblad they are nowhere near the construction the build quality anything like that but if you want to take good medium format pictures it's not a bad choice there are others I'm sure people are watching this thinking but I have you know and I know there are there many others but this is one that when I was particularly budget conscious at one point in my life that I did get and and I loved it I still shoot on every now and then today the viewfinder is not as bright as the hustle Bloods it's funky and you kind of have to learn to get around it sometimes to get specific pictures like I mentioned the long shutter speed so if you have a slow shutter speed you're probably gonna get some motion blur from the camera jolting when that shutter pops open there is a second model this this is the earlier one this is just a standard key of 88 there's a second model called the key of 88 cm and the difference was is they changed well first of all the shutter curtain is not made of metal it's made of cloth which reduces some of the jarring that goes on and slow shutters speeds and the other thing is they change the lens mount and so it is actually the same lens mount that's used with a camera made in the Czech Czech Republic I don't know when but the pin tacks excuse me the pentacon 67 so right now the pentacon six I'm getting them all mixed up the pentacon six became later what the Pentax used is the six seven it's an SLR looking camera and they change the lens mount so you could actually use the same lenses that you can get for the pentacon cameras which are real zeiss lenses the problem I have with that is that the key of 88 CMS typically if you buy them there's a company in the US that's actually distributing and still and the problem is is when you buy them they start to go up in cost a little bit better camera for I think more than a little bit money and I think at that point you probably doing better to either just get a pentacon sic system or i would look into starting into a Hasselblad system so that's just my my my point is like you're doing this to save money so I would go with the with the bottom of the line on this gorgeous pictures I will put a link below or in the show notes however you're viewing this episode I'll put a Flickr gallery of stuff that I've taken I've managed to get some really images out here and you know one of the ways I got around the the shutter jarring motion that you mean the picture blurs just a little bit around edges and stuff I would go to really long shutter speed so that jarring wouldn't set in to the image or you need more light those are the two ways around it the cable release is kind of it works but it's it's odd as well but anyway a wonderful alternative to a Hasselblad system that's the key of 88 check it out I will put links below so you can find out more if you're interested especially you know some of you guys I got like cool feedback on the on the Russian 35 millimeter stuff I did with the feds and the zuhr keys and it's fun because you know essentially none of these are expensive cameras so they are kind of fun to collect in a way but I like making images with them in fact I will say this about the key of 88 the key of 88 to medium format is much better images then I found the feds and the zorgons to be two thirty-five millimeter just in part of that is probably because the size of the negative that you get in the end but anyway the key of 88 is a great camera go check them out we'll look at some more stuff as we go but you guys have wanted some some fun camera previews that I'm not calling them reviews there they're old anyway Oh an interesting thing also I found when I was looking a few things up for to do this episode is that Kiev actually closed the plant in Russia in 2009 and they are no longer being made and it is rumored that the u.s. distributor distributors sorry has enough to last a couple more years but nobody really knows so it could be that they start getting extinct so you never know it could be a funky collector item at some point in its life but anyway Kiev 88 check it out probably the best place to find these honestly is eBay even though I really have a big love/hate with eBay sometimes but really it's the only way to get them and I look around you can find a good deal usually you get the kit which comes with like this big leather box that it comes in that you can use as a camera bag it usually comes with an 80 millimeter lens F 2.8 usually it's an AR set or keeping with the previous one was called on these there's two different models it's the same thing let's change the name and I usually get one film back sometimes too so anyway check it out that's the key of 88 and I will see you next time on the art of photography thank you for watchingeverybody welcome back to another episode of the art of photography this is our daily vlog edition for now at least I may be merging these two pretty soon I'm not sure yet either way today we're going to talk about medium format cameras in inexpensive ways to get into medium format if you're not familiar I've done podcasts in the past and put some links below but film formats 35-millimeter is popular as it was for years and years was always considered an amateur film format mainly was because of the size of the negative that you get me and it's very small compared to something like large format which is four by five four inches by five inches which is a really large negative or eight by ten which is really large medium format sits in the medium and usually six centimeters by six centimeters square is the standard format although there are some rectangular formats as well so you can find cameras that are six by seven six by nine in fact a couple episodes ago I showed you my Voigtlander besa which is a six by nine so it's a rectangular format it looks more like 35 in a way even though you're getting a much bigger negative the obvious benefit to having a really large negative is that you have more information and more detail that goes on to that negative so you can get really large prints you can get really sharp prints really clear where's 35 millimeter has always been considered a little bit of an amateur or inferior format even though and this is a different topic and I've talked about before but the 35 millimeter changed the game as far as portability and how photographers could make images and the size however medium format does have some advantages now the only camera i've talked about ever on this podcast that's medium format other than my voice landers really the whole go and I do still consider the Holga to be the cheapest way to get into medium format now it depends on what kind of images you want to make in fact I was telling somebody in an e-mail the other day who had asked me the question about getting into medium format the Holga because the lens is just a very crude single element plastic meniscus lens tends to be very inconsistent so every camera has a little bit different look I personally like that you get the big negative you get the detail my not this one the mein hoga that I shoot on that was modified by Randy at Holga mods again link below Randy does awesome work and you get some really fun Hogan's they're going to cost you a little more than $30.00 but you can do some cool modifications to them you know bulb exposure having cable release things like that but the hold is great but generally you're going to have more of a blurry artistic kind of look to things in general I have seen some pretty sharp Holga lenses but they still have imperfections it's a cheap way to get into medium format but if you are interested in going a little further in doing something one of the cameras that I bought years ago is this one this is a Kiev 88 it is another Russian camera this one is medium format it's complete clunker and I actually love it I don't shoot on it as much anymore but at one point I really wanted to get into really sharp image making with medium format couldn't afford a Hasselblad and so the Kiev 88 is actually not a bad alternative and I'll tell you why the key of 88 is actually a Russian copy of an older model Hasselblad and it's actually specifically the Hasselblad 1600 f I think which I've never actually seen when they're collector cameras and it was a little bit crude and not as refined as the later CM models and the like but it's very similar it's modular design you can take off the lens in fact the lenses are interchangeable and the cool thing is that you can get you know when you consider what the cost would be for a Hasselblad system with a bunch of lenses you can get into these Russian cameras much more inexpensively particularly with the wide angle and the fisheye lenses so rather than having to pay six thousand dollars for a lens which you would with a Hasselblad line you can pay a lot less usually I haven't ever bought one of the wide-angle and a camera what they go for I have to look on ebay but but anyway let me show you this before I put it back together the the whole idea with the with the kiev 88 is modular and design just like the Hasselblad so you can actually get extra film backs these come off so this right here is the body you have a viewfinder at the top there are alternative view finders and I'll show you in a little bit here and the the biggest difference between a model modern Hasselblad cameron this is a little frustrating the key of ATA is this big metal shutter back here and the metal shutter is clunky my friend Andy calls it Nutcracker because it makes such a horrible sound when you open and close it they're not quiet cameras then you know they're very obtrusive but you know for the fraction of a cost of a hospital I think you can get into a basic body viewfinder and back in eighty millimeter lens for probably $250 I'm guessing something like that I haven't looked at the ebay prices in a long time I they may have come down and so I think what I paid for this one but anyway interchangeable lenses which is very nice the standard 80 millimeter lens focal length of 2.8 and it's it's an all around you know it's not quite the zeiss lenses that come on the Hasselblad maybe not quite that tech sharp and people who tend to look very closely I've been told you know there are big differences in the contrast and having shot on both you know I don't know these are good enough and I tend to manipulate a little bit in the darkroom and a little bit in Photoshop so with levels and things to the contrast of the lens is not something I'm is picky about but it does have a shutter curtain and that's a big difference the Hasselblad 1600 F had a shutter curtain - I don't know whether it was metal or not but either way the modern Hasselblad Zahl have leaf shutters that live inside the lens so they're much quieter and then the biggest difference and this is the biggest really the only gripe I would have about this cameras you do have to learn how to get around a few things and one of them is particularly this was probably eight or nine years ago it's I live in Texas it's extremely hot and I was being pretty prolific with my photo taking that summer and a lot of it I just decided to start doing a lot of my botanical stuff a lot of the flowers that was shooting a lot of still lifes with vegetables and fruit and the like that sense of funny to say but anyway but I was getting good results and I was using the key of a lot at that time now one thing though if you're doing very moody lighting it's very low lighting you've got the tripod set and you've stopped way down to like f11 or something and you're going to get a really sharp photo or you're using a macro lens filter and you know maybe you have to stop down to f-22 or the like of the problem that you have is with really shutter slow really slow shutter speeds easy for me to say is that the massive shutter curtain that's made out of metal in there will pop on you and it makes a loud noise and it also physically shakes the camera so I ended up having a lot blurred areas on my images so it needs an adjustment the lens is a little loose but anyway very easy to deal with I got a strap for this one so you can take it on the go it's a very heavy camera essentially it is an SLR camera so if you pop open the top viewfinder and look in there you're able to see compose through the lens which you know is different than a TLR you can get your focus set you can get your your this one does not have a meter in it you can get them with a metered eye level prism which replaces this it just slides out when you take the back off and that enables you to treat more like an SLR as far as like you know your composing and those do have a meter in it the meter kind of tells you what you need to set it at so it's not a fast meter and certainly not modern by any stretch of the imagination anyway the Kiev 80 it's a very cool camera also has inside I'm afraid I'd open it yeah there's a young you see that open up or not but you can pop this up here and you get a little magnifying glass for extra you know sensitive sharp focusing if you really want to get detail but they work really great I believe there's a set of bellows available for this anyway it's a whole camera system and like I said for a fraction of the cost that's going to cost you to get into a household blog this is an excellent alternative flash does work on it and they have interchangeable back so you could if you are out on the street shooting on location you could have one back loaded with one film type and then second back look you know like if I had black and white film in this back I could have another one in my bag that has color slide film or something in it and you can go back and forth which is pretty cool anyway it's a clunky camera the design there I'm not really fragile but I have had them break on me in the past and that's no fun this is actually the second one I've owned the first one just locked up after taking a picture one time and I would never able to get it unfrozen I even you know because I banged it against the concrete trying to unlock it and destroy the whole thing but anyway I really shouldn't talk about that here this is about camera love and not destruction but anyway all that aside anyway the shutter speeds basically you have a bulb setting 125th of a second whether you have some slower settings - so it's bulb 2 seconds 4 seconds 8 seconds excuse me bulb half a second quarter second eighth of a second fifteenth of a second 30 just goes up and stops up to a thousand as your top shutter speed on that so anyway it does have a stop down so you can do depth of field preview and like I said they're really a nice alternative to Hasselblad they are nowhere near the construction the build quality anything like that but if you want to take good medium format pictures it's not a bad choice there are others I'm sure people are watching this thinking but I have you know and I know there are there many others but this is one that when I was particularly budget conscious at one point in my life that I did get and and I loved it I still shoot on every now and then today the viewfinder is not as bright as the hustle Bloods it's funky and you kind of have to learn to get around it sometimes to get specific pictures like I mentioned the long shutter speed so if you have a slow shutter speed you're probably gonna get some motion blur from the camera jolting when that shutter pops open there is a second model this this is the earlier one this is just a standard key of 88 there's a second model called the key of 88 cm and the difference was is they changed well first of all the shutter curtain is not made of metal it's made of cloth which reduces some of the jarring that goes on and slow shutters speeds and the other thing is they change the lens mount and so it is actually the same lens mount that's used with a camera made in the Czech Czech Republic I don't know when but the pin tacks excuse me the pentacon 67 so right now the pentacon six I'm getting them all mixed up the pentacon six became later what the Pentax used is the six seven it's an SLR looking camera and they change the lens mount so you could actually use the same lenses that you can get for the pentacon cameras which are real zeiss lenses the problem I have with that is that the key of 88 CMS typically if you buy them there's a company in the US that's actually distributing and still and the problem is is when you buy them they start to go up in cost a little bit better camera for I think more than a little bit money and I think at that point you probably doing better to either just get a pentacon sic system or i would look into starting into a Hasselblad system so that's just my my my point is like you're doing this to save money so I would go with the with the bottom of the line on this gorgeous pictures I will put a link below or in the show notes however you're viewing this episode I'll put a Flickr gallery of stuff that I've taken I've managed to get some really images out here and you know one of the ways I got around the the shutter jarring motion that you mean the picture blurs just a little bit around edges and stuff I would go to really long shutter speed so that jarring wouldn't set in to the image or you need more light those are the two ways around it the cable release is kind of it works but it's it's odd as well but anyway a wonderful alternative to a Hasselblad system that's the key of 88 check it out I will put links below so you can find out more if you're interested especially you know some of you guys I got like cool feedback on the on the Russian 35 millimeter stuff I did with the feds and the zuhr keys and it's fun because you know essentially none of these are expensive cameras so they are kind of fun to collect in a way but I like making images with them in fact I will say this about the key of 88 the key of 88 to medium format is much better images then I found the feds and the zorgons to be two thirty-five millimeter just in part of that is probably because the size of the negative that you get in the end but anyway the key of 88 is a great camera go check them out we'll look at some more stuff as we go but you guys have wanted some some fun camera previews that I'm not calling them reviews there they're old anyway Oh an interesting thing also I found when I was looking a few things up for to do this episode is that Kiev actually closed the plant in Russia in 2009 and they are no longer being made and it is rumored that the u.s. distributor distributors sorry has enough to last a couple more years but nobody really knows so it could be that they start getting extinct so you never know it could be a funky collector item at some point in its life but anyway Kiev 88 check it out probably the best place to find these honestly is eBay even though I really have a big love/hate with eBay sometimes but really it's the only way to get them and I look around you can find a good deal usually you get the kit which comes with like this big leather box that it comes in that you can use as a camera bag it usually comes with an 80 millimeter lens F 2.8 usually it's an AR set or keeping with the previous one was called on these there's two different models it's the same thing let's change the name and I usually get one film back sometimes too so anyway check it out that's the key of 88 and I will see you next time on the art of photography thank you for watching\n"