Kiev-19M

Arsenal · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 135 film; hinged, removable back · 1988

Also known as: Kiev 19M · Kiev-19M · Kiev19M · KIEV-19M · Kiev 19 M · Kiew 19M · Kiew-19M · Kiew 19 M · Kyiv 19M · Kyiv-19M · Arsenal Kiev 19M · Mirage 19M · Киев-19М · Киев 19М · Київ-19М

Variants & identification

Variant	Mount	Years	Serial ranges	Production
Kiev-19M, Cyrillic КИЕВ nameplate	Nikon F	—	—	No production figure has been published
Kiev-19M, Latin KIEV nameplate	Nikon F	—	—	No production figure has been published

Kosmo Foto says the earliest 19Ms had a metal top plate before Arsenal moved to plastic. No photographed or numbered metal-topped 19M is known, so it is not shown as a variant. A metal top with 19M on the body is the thing to look for. A metal top with КИЕВ-19 on the prism and no grip is a Kiev-19.
Mirage 19M: Kosmo Foto says export cameras were sometimes sold under this name with a new nameplate, for buyers wary of a Soviet camera. No photograph of a Mirage-badged camera is known, so it is a name to search for, not a documented variant.
Ihagee Elbaflex: a German–Ukrainian project unveiled in late 2017 to rebuild the camera on the old Kiev-19M line, with wooden inlays in place of the plastic grip and some covering, a better plastic shell, revised Arsat lenses and no meter. Kosmo Foto reports a Kickstarter price of US$530 for the body (expected retail about US$1,500) and says the campaign failed to reach its goal. Ihagee's Stefan Immes said a small run might still be made. No production Elbaflex is known.
The camera was still on sale new well after Soviet times. Kosmo Foto says Lomography sold it in the early 2000s, and a 2010 mflenses forum post says it was still sold new for about the price of a used Nikon body. If the line closed in 2000, these may have been old stock.
collection-appareils.fr gives the standard lens as an "Arsat H 50 mm f/1.2", but its own photograph shows an ARSAT H 1:2 50mm. The f/2 lens is the kit lens; the f/1.2 is the Volna-8N, a separate Arsenal lens.
No original price, weight or dimensions are given in the sources for this page. English Wikipedia calls the body moulded polycarbonate and Kosmo Foto finds it heavier than expected for a mostly plastic camera, but neither gives a figure.

How to tell them apart (expand)

19M logo on the front plate and a black plastic body: a Kiev-19M. КИЕВ-19 on a satin-chrome body with no grip is a Kiev-19
Speed dial on the front beside the lens, top speed 1/500, no self-timer lever: the 19M shares this with the Kiev-19. A self-timer lever and 1/1000 mean a Kiev-20
A screw-on hand grip on the front at the left as you face the camera (it can be removed, so its absence proves nothing)
Meter switched on by a light press on the release, not by the stop-down lever

Kiev-19M, Cyrillic КИЕВ nameplate:

Киев in a stylised Cyrillic script on the front of the prism housing, as in the front and three-quarter views of Arsenal's English-language instruction book
Black body; the kit lens in those pictures is engraved in Cyrillic (ГЕЛИОС-81Н)
19M logo on the front plate at the grip end, to the left of the lens as you face the camera (instruction book, p. 10)

Kiev-19M, Latin KIEV nameplate:

Kiev in Latin script, white on a black plate with a red line, on the front of the prism housing (collection-appareils.fr; Kosmo Foto's photographs by Alastair Dandy)
Black body with a 19M logo on the front plate at the grip end
Shutter-speed dial on the front of the body, to the right of the lens as you face it, as on the Kiev-19 (collection-appareils.fr photograph)
Usually seen with the Arsat H 1:2 50mm, the Helios-81N under its 1990s name

Kiev-19M, Cyrillic КИЕВ nameplate: Documented by the factory's own instruction book, whose photographs show this nameplate and whose delivery list gives the MC Helios-81N as the kit lens. No dated or numbered example has been seen, so the years of this marking are not known, and whether it was the home-market marking and the Latin one the export marking is an inference, not something a source states.
Kiev-19M, Latin KIEV nameplate: The body most often photographed: the collection-appareils.fr example and the camera in Kosmo Foto's photographs carry this plate and an ARSAT H 1:2 50mm. The Arsat name on the lens suggests 1990s production, but none of these examples has a published serial number.

Specifications

Format: 24×36mm on 135 film; hinged, removable back
Finder: fixed pentaprism; Fresnel screen with a microprism centre and ground-glass collar · 93% coverage
Shutter: mechanical focal-plane shutter with metal curtains travelling vertically, bottom to top along the short side of the frame (instruction book); a battery powers only the meter (collection-appareils.fr) · 1/2s – 1/500, B · flash sync 1/60 (instruction book; collection-appareils.fr); hot shoe with a centre contact and a socket for a flash cable · no self-timer
Film advance: single-stroke lever with 35° of free travel before the stroke; if the stroke is incomplete the lever stays in an intermediate position and must be pushed on to finish cocking (instruction book)
Back: hinged, and removable (instruction book)
Meter: Through the lens with the diaphragm fully open, the difference from the Kiev-19, which meters only stopped down. A ledge on the lens's aperture ring engages a feeler ("dog") on the body when the lens is mounted and passes the set aperture to the meter (instruction book). The reading is centre-weighted: an oval field in the middle of the frame, offset towards the bottom, mostly from a 12mm central zone. The meter switches on with a light press on the release button. Film speed 25–3200 on a dial marked ГОСТ, labelled GOST/ISO in the English book; working range 4.8–13,900 cd/m² with an f/2 lens. Power is one 6 V PX-28-type cell, 13mm across and 25mm high, or a stack of cells of that size; the LEDs blink or go out when it is failing (instruction book). The meter has a poor reputation: see `disputed` and the reviews.
Country: Ukraine (Ukrainian SSR, then independent Ukraine)
Accessories: Screw-on hand grip (the book's 'ergonomic attachment', part 30, fixed by screw 31); the delivery set lists a 'strap with screw', which matches those part numbers. Photographs show a strap ring on the grip · Case, shoulder strap, eye-cup and front lens cap, in the instruction book's delivery set · Arsenal's N-mount lenses listed in the instruction book: MC Mir-20N 3.5/20, MC Mir-24N 2/35, MC Kaleinar-5N 2.8/100, Telear-N 3.5/200 and MC Granit-11N 4.5/80–200

The instruction book gives 93% of the frame and a built-in −1 dioptre eyepiece, and says correction lenses 18mm across fit in place of the eyepiece's protective glass; collection-appareils.fr says round Nikon correction lenses fit. Two LEDs at the left of the field: the instruction book calls the upper signal СВЕТА МНОГО (too much light) and the lower СВЕТА МАЛО (too little); both lit together is НОРМА, correct exposure.

Where sources disagree

First

1988 — Kosmo Foto; collection-appareils.fr ('circa 1988')
1991 — ru.wikipedia's Kiev-19 article, citing Суглоб, 1200 фотоаппаратов из СССР (2009), p. 485

Better supported: 1988

Neither side gives a dated first body. No 19M with a published serial number has been found that would settle it.

Last

2000, when the assembly line closed — Kosmo Foto
'post-2000' — collection-appareils.fr

Kosmo Foto also says the 2017 Elbaflex was to be built on the old 19M line, so the tooling survived the end of production.

Meter reliability

Widely reported as erratic; the meters in both of Kosmo Foto's examples were too inaccurate to use
One of two bodies had a faulty meter and the other worked fully — a review on haardt.net, as quoted on the mflenses forum
Named in Kosmo Foto's 2020 first-impressions article on the Hedeco Lime One meter among metering designs that 'just weren't very reliable in the first' place

The camera works without the meter, so a body with a dead or wrong meter still takes pictures.

What reviewers say

Stephen Dowling, Kosmo Foto (blog) — The meter is the camera's curse and the lenses its blessing. The meters in both of his bodies were so far out that he used Sunny 16 or a handheld meter instead. The Arsat-H 50/2 has attractive rendering wide open but flares and fogs in bright side light, and he notes the Kaleinar-5N 100/2.8's strong reputation.

History

The Kiev-19M is a 35mm SLR made by the Arsenal plant in Kiev, and the last of its cameras on the Nikon F bayonet; Arsenal’s lenses for it carry the Cyrillic Н (N) for the mount. It is the Kiev-19 made again in a black plastic shell, with one important change. The Kiev-19 meters only with the lens stopped down and has no coupling to the lens. The 19M reads the set aperture through a feeler at the mount and meters with the lens wide open, as the more expensive Kiev-20 had done. Everything else stays at the Kiev-19’s level: a mechanical metal focal-plane shutter from 1/2 to 1/500 and B, flash sync at 1/60, no self-timer, and the speed dial on the front of the body beside the lens. A hand grip screws to the front and doubles as a strap anchor. Kosmo Foto and collection-appareils.fr date the camera to 1988. ru.wikipedia, citing a 2009 Russian reference book, says 1991. Kosmo Foto says it was made until the line closed in 2000, so a good part of its production came after the Soviet Union ended, and English Wikipedia calls it the most-produced Kiev F-mount camera.

Arsenal’s instruction book lists the MC Helios-81N 2/50 as the kit lens, along with the rest of the N range made for the Kiev-19 and Kiev-20: the MC Mir-20N 20mm, MC Mir-24N 35mm, MC Kaleinar-5N 100mm, Telear-N 200mm and the MC Granit-11N 80–200mm zoom. Most cameras in collectors’ photographs carry the Arsat H 1:2 50mm, the same Helios-81N under the Arsat name Arsenal used for its lenses in the 1990s. camera-wiki.org calls the mount Nikon F (AI), and collection-appareils.fr says the camera takes AI and AI-S Nikkors and other makers’ lenses of that type. None of these sources says whether pre-AI Nikkors can be mounted.

Two nameplates appear in the sources. The photographs in Arsenal’s English instruction book show Киев in a Cyrillic script on the prism, with a Cyrillic-engraved Helios-81N. The bodies photographed by collectors carry Kiev in Latin letters on a black plate with a red line, and usually an Arsat lens. Both have a 19M logo on the front plate at the grip end. Kosmo Foto reports two other forms that no photographed example confirms: early bodies with a metal top plate, and export cameras badged Mirage 19M. A chrome or metal-topped camera offered as a 19M should show 19M on the body. If it has КИЕВ-19 on the prism and no grip, it is a Kiev-19. The Ihagee Elbaflex of 2017, a planned rebuild of the 19M with wooden trim and no meter, failed on Kickstarter and is not known to have been made.

The meter is what to check, and what the camera is known for. Kosmo Foto calls it the camera’s curse: both of its examples read too far out to trust. A review quoted on the mflenses forum found one good meter in two bodies. The meter takes one 6 V PX-28-type cell, not the two LR44s of the Kiev-19. A light press on the release lights the + and − LEDs at the left of the finder, and both lit together means correct exposure. Test it against a known meter or another camera before relying on it. The LEDs blink or go out when the cell is low, so try a fresh one before judging the meter. The shutter does not need the battery, so a body with a bad meter still works as a manual camera. Run every speed. Collection-appareils.fr finds even a working camera a little stiff and noisy. Check that the grip and its screw come with the body: the grip unscrews, and the instruction book’s delivery set includes it.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Photographs

More sample photos elsewhere

These photographers keep all rights to their work — enjoy it at the source.

Live listings

The listings collector hasn't run for this family yet — check back soon, or search the marketplaces directly meanwhile.