Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Kiev 4

Arsenal · Contax RF mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, removable back · 1958

Also known as: Kiev 4A · Киев 4 · Kiev-4

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Kiev 4 (metered) Contax RF 1958–1980 #571478 — 1957, sovietcams' recorded example of its earliest type
#586213, #586428, #587342, #587467, #587591, #587665, #587873, #588785 — 1958; #590132, #5916313 — 1959; the ten cameras sovietcams records with Ukrainian engravings
#6305404 — 1963; a camera numbered 63 27943 — 1963, camera-wiki's worked example
#7601105 — 1976 		No figure published; over a million Kiev rangefinders were made in all
Kiev 4A (unmetered) Contax RF 1958–1980 #5620562 — 1956, sovietcams' recorded example of its earliest type
#6908391 — 1969
#7415539 — 1974; #7517935 — 1975; #7626221 — 1976 		No separate figure published
  1. No production figure has been published for the Kiev 4 or the Kiev 4A separately. sovietcams lists four types of each and enters "Quantity: Unknown" against every one; camera-wiki gives only the line total, over a million cameras sold worldwide across the whole Kiev rangefinder family from 1947 to 1987. The million is a figure for the family, not for this model.
  2. The years do not agree between sources. This entry carries 1958–1980 for both bodies; camera-wiki's model list gives the Kiev 4 as 1957–79 and the Kiev 4A as 1956–80; sovietcams' type-by-type spans run 1957–1980 for the metered camera and 1956–1980 for the unmetered one, and its earliest dated examples — #571478 and #5620562 — support the earlier starts. See the disputed block below: the likeliest reading is that the earlier dates belong to the camera and the later one to the name it was given in 1958, which no source says in as many words.
  3. No factory serial-number table has been published for the Kiev rangefinders. What exists is a collector record: sovietcams' type pages and the Fotoua archive of numbers, which camera-wiki points to for dating. The rule is what those archives confirm; they are not a register of what was built.
  4. The corroboration hunt, and what it found. The two-digit year rule was carried here by camera-wiki, Mike Eckman and JAPB; USSRPhoto's catalogue adds a fourth and independent line of evidence, a body-by-body registry maintained by collectors since 2008 in which every recorded Kiev serial is written with the two-digit year split off from the running number. Its early-Kiev-4 page independently reproduces sovietcams' own 1957 example. The "5 or 6 digits" claim, which rested on sovietcams alone, is confirmed there across twenty-three bodies. The single-source badge has been cleared on that basis. What is still carried by one source is narrower and named in the notes above: the ten Ukrainian-engraved bodies, and the type-by-type spans, are sovietcams' alone.
  5. A dating check that costs nothing. USSRPhoto's early Kiev 4 registry lists body and lens numbers together, and the lenses track the bodies: #57 684 with a Jupiter-8 numbered 5701409, #58 03623 with 5805875, #59 1526 with 5900941. On an untouched camera the first two digits of the lens and of the body normally agree or nearly agree, so a wide gap between them is a sign of a later marriage rather than of a wrong reading.
  6. An early identification point, dated by its own serials. USSRPhoto separates a first Kiev 4 with "no edge of rigidity on the top of the lightmeter" — no raised ridges on the meter housing. Every body recorded under it carries a 57, 58 or 59 prefix, which puts the feature in the camera's first three years.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A 90mm rangefinder base in a camera sold into the 1980s
  • One window for focusing and framing
  • Vertical metal-blade shutter, B and 1 to 1/1250

Kiev 4 (metered):

  • Selenium meter on the top plate; 8–500 GOST

Kiev 4A (unmetered):

  • No meter housing — a flat top plate

Serial-range notes

the exception the rule hides
The year-prefix convention is Arsenal's from 1947 and the lens plants' from 1949 — it is not Soviet-wide and it is not KMZ-wide. KMZ's own Zorki bodies of 1948–54 run in a single sequence with no year prefix, so the rule fails there silently and plausibly: a 1951 Zorki 55325 reads as 1955, a 1953 254580 reads as 1925.
the first two digits
THE RULE, and on this camera it is as reliable as it gets in Soviet equipment. The first two digits of the serial number are the year of manufacture: #6305404 is 1963, #7601105 is 1976. camera-wiki works the same example twice, reading a number beginning 62 as a 1962 camera and 63 27943 as a 1963 one, and Mike Eckman puts it flatly — Kiev cameras and lenses are dated from the first two digits of the serial. What follows is a running number within the year, not a total.
five, six and seven digits
The length grew and the prefix did not. sovietcams records that the earliest Kiev 4 bodies "came with 5 or 6 digits serials", and its 1957 example is #571478 — the year and four figures — while by 1959 seven digits are normal (#5916313) and stay so to the end. So the year is read off the front of the number; counting backwards from the end gives the wrong answer on an early body. USSRPhoto's independent registry of the earliest Kiev 4 confirms it across twenty-three bodies running from #57 047 to #59 3947 — five, six and seven figures with the same two-digit head throughout, and the registry prints the year prefix separated from the running number, which is how collectors read these in practice. The 1957 body sovietcams lists as #571478 appears there as #57 1478.
#68 06307 to #68 19315, with NO logo on the accessory clip
A 1968 anomaly, and a caution. USSRPhoto records nine Kiev 4 and 4A bodies — 6806307, 6808112, 6808417, 6811264, 6816062, 6816332, 6816711, 6817037, 6819315 — that carry neither the usual logo nor "made in USSR" on the accessory clip, only the serial number, with "nothing else different compared to the running production". No explanation is on record. Two of the nine are listed with lenses that postdate them by nearly a decade — a Jupiter-8M numbered 7727255 and a Jupiter-12 numbered 7804048 on 1968 bodies — which is the ordinary reminder that a Kiev and the lens on it are dated separately.
#586213 through #5916313
The ten bodies sovietcams records with Ukrainian rather than Russian engravings, which it calls an ultra-rare version. Every one of them dates to 1958 or 1959 on the two-digit rule, which puts a two-year window on a variant for which no production figure exists at all.
a number beginning 00
The one number on a Soviet camera that is not a date. JAPB records a habit, kept for the whole life of the USSR, of numbering prototypes and pre-production samples from 00 — and post-Soviet plants sometimes used the same prefix for the year 2000, which makes it ambiguous twice over. A Kiev 4 so numbered cannot be dated from its serial.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, removable back
Finder
Combined viewfinder and coupled rangefinder in one large window
Base length
90 mm
Shutter
vertical-travel metal blade · B, 1 – 1/1250
Meter
Selenium cell, uncoupled, 8–500 GOST (Kiev 4 only)
Country
Ukraine

Where sources disagree

Years
  • Kiev 4 1958–1980 and Kiev 4A 1958–1980 — the spans carried in this entry
  • Kiev 4 1957–79 and Kiev 4A 1956–80 — camera-wiki's model list
  • Kiev 4 1957–1980 and Kiev 4A 1956–1980 — sovietcams' type-by-type spans

Better supported: The earlier starts for the camera, 1958 for the name — the two questions have been run together, and the entry's numeric fields answer the second

The three readings differ only at the ends, no factory table exists to settle them, and the registries date individual cameras rather than production runs. What settles the appearance of conflict is that the sources are not answering the same question. The dated bodies are real: sovietcams' earliest examples, #571478 and #5620562, read as 1957 and 1956 on the two-digit rule, and USSRPhoto's independent registry records twelve further 1957 bodies. But the designations Kiev 4 and Kiev 4A date from 1958, when Arsenal renumbered the Kiev III and Kiev II without changing the cameras — this entry says so in its own opening, and it is the standard account. A body numbered 56 or 57 is therefore the same machine under its earlier name, and calling it a Kiev 4 type-1, as sovietcams does, is a modern collector's classification applied backwards rather than a claim about what was engraved on it. Read that way every source is right: the type runs from 1956, the name from 1958. The reconciliation is this project's own and is stated by nobody, which is why both readings stay recorded here; the numeric fields keep 1958 because that is when the camera this entry is about acquired its name.

What reviewers say

History

The Kiev 4 is a Contax III with a different name, sold new for more than twenty years after Zeiss Ikon had stopped making rangefinders altogether. Over a million Kiev rangefinders were built across the whole line, which makes this by a wide margin the most-produced camera in this catalog.

Its argument today is the rangefinder base. Ninety millimetres — the prewar Contax figure, which the West German IIa reduced to 73 and which no Leica ever approached — in a camera that can be bought for a fraction of anything comparable. camera-wiki puts the practical consequence well: focusing a tight portrait, you can see the difference between the nose and the eyes being sharp.

The 4A is the same camera without the meter, and for a buyer now it is usually the better one. A selenium cell seventy years old is a decoration; a flat top plate has nothing on it to have failed.

What to watch for is the same on either: these were built to a price by a factory whose civil production was a sideline to military optics, and quality control was uneven. A good Kiev is a genuinely fine camera and a bad one is a paperweight, and the two look identical in a photograph.

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

Kiev 4
Kiev 4 with the Jupiter-8M — Pixelillo, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Kiev 4
Kiev 4, top plate — Dmitry Makeev, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $140 across 82 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $85–$180). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 3 days: unchanged from $140.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$140$85–$18082
2026-09-10$140$85–$18082
2026-09-06$140$85–$18083

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Show 145 more listings

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Listings updated 2026-09-11. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Kiev III · Kiev II · Kiev 4M · Contax III · Kiev 5

Lenses for this body: Jupiter-11 135mm f/4 · Jupiter-12 35mm f/2.8 · Jupiter-3 50mm f/1.5 · Jupiter-8 50mm f/2 · Jupiter-9 85mm f/2 · Sonnar 5cm f/2 · Orion-15 28mm f/6

Sources (9)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.