Kiev-88CM

Arsenal · Pentacon Six mount · 6×6cm on 120 roll film in interchangeable magazines · 1999

Also known as: Kiev 88CM · Kiev-88CM · Kiev 88 CM · Kiev-88 CM · Kiev88CM · Kiev 88C · Kiev-88C · Kiew 88CM · Kiew 88 CM · Киев-88СМ · Киев 88СМ · Київ-88СМ · Arax CM · Arax-CM · Arax CM MLU · Hartblei 1006C · Hartblei 1006M · Kiev Hartblei 688M · Kiev B.i.G. · B.i.G.-Six · Pentasix 636

Variants & identification

Variant	Mount	Years	Serial ranges	Production
Kiev-88CM (Arsenal)	Pentacon Six	1999	1515 — an 88CM photographed by oddcameras.com, a low number that the site connects, without confirming it, to a report that the year-prefixed serials were dropped in 2000	—
Arax-CM and Arax-CM MLU (Arax, Kyiv)	Pentacon Six	2002	—	—
Kiev B.i.G. / B.i.G.-Six (Brenner)	Pentacon Six	1996	—	—
Hartblei P6 rebuilds (Hartblei 1006C, Hartblei 1006M, Kiev Hartblei 688M)	Pentacon Six	—	—	—
Wiese Pentasix 636 (Hamburg)	Pentacon Six	—	—	—

No list price or production figure for the 88CM was found. kievaholic.com (2001) says only that an 88CM kit cost about $150–200 more than a Kiev-88 kit from dealers, which is a dealer difference, not a price.
No source gives separate shutter speeds for the 88CM's cloth shutter. The Kiev-88's metal shutter runs 1/2–1/1000 and B (Russian Wikipedia), so the speeds field is left empty rather than carried over.
No weight or dimensions are published for the 88CM. oddcameras.com weighs a 1992 Kiev-88 body at 631g.
TRA's 1998 review of the B.i.G. reports that Arsenal was 'apparently' making a Kiev-88 with the Pentacon Six mount as an option, 'sometimes referred to as a Kiev SIX'. No other source and no example was found, so it is not a variant: it may be an early name for the 88CM, or a separate run.
oddcameras.com also names a 'Kiev 88С' with the Pentacon Six mount alongside the 88CM. No other source describes it.
Late Arsat lenses and converters are marked 'C' for the Pentacon Six mount; TRA reads it as an effort to end the confusion between the Cyrillic Б and В and the Latin B and V, while some commentators he cites take the C as Cyrillic for 'Six'. Earlier Arsat lenses, such as an MC Mir-26 he shows, still carry 'B' for the Pentacon Six mount (pentaconsix.com). camera-wiki shows an 88CM with an 'Arsat C 3.5/45mm'.
A Kiev-88 lens (Cyrillic В, often written 'B' by sellers) does not fit the 88CM directly. oddcameras.com uses one on its 88CM (Hartblei 'still makes them', it says) but could not fit its 45mm, and warns that the aperture pin may not open screw-mount lenses fully on a body set up for Zeiss lenses. Pentacon Six lenses cannot go on a Kiev-88 at all.

How to tell them apart (expand)

Locking lever at about 1 o'clock above the lens and a lens index at 12 o'clock = factory 88CM or Arax-CM. A plain Pentacon Six throat where the lens itself is twisted to lock = a B.i.G., Hartblei or Wiese conversion of a Kiev-88. A coarse-threaded mount with a release button = an unconverted Kiev-88 (pentaconsix.com; oddcameras.com)
Look into the throat with the lens off: black cloth curtains = 88CM; bronze-coloured metal = Kiev-88 (kievaholic.com)
Shutter release on the side of the body rather than the front edge (kievaholic.com; oddcameras.com)
Lenses: Pentacon Six lenses carry Cyrillic Б (Latin B) or, late Arsat ones, C. Kiev-88 lenses carry Cyrillic В (Latin V), which Western sellers often write as B, so check the mount itself, not the letter (pentaconsix.com; Russian Wikipedia)

Kiev-88CM (Arsenal):

A slim lever on the front of the body at about 1 o'clock, just behind the lens, which turns a breech-lock ring recessed inside the mount; the lens goes in with its index at 12 o'clock and is not turned (pentaconsix.com; oddcameras.com)
Black cloth focal-plane shutter; the Kiev-88's is bronze-coloured metal (kievaholic.com; pentaconsix.com, which calls the cloth rubberised)
Shutter release moved to the side of the body (kievaholic.com; oddcameras.com)
Fold-out crank on the wind knob (kievaholic.com; pentaconsix.com; Russian Wikipedia); oddcameras.com's example has the plain knob without a handle
Redesigned, stronger base plate and tripod socket (kievaholic.com; pentaconsix.com)
Usually supplied with the TTL/Spot metering prism rather than the Kiev-88's centre-weighted TTL prism (Russian Wikipedia; kievaholic.com, which says most but not all kits)

Arax-CM and Arax-CM MLU (Arax, Kyiv):

ARAX name plate in place of Kiev; the example pentaconsix.com shows (an Araxfoto picture) is all black, with a fold-out wind crank
MLU versions have a mirror pre-release; offered with and without it (pentaconsix.com; Russian Wikipedia)
The example pentaconsix.com shows has the newer spot/averaging metering prism
Leatherette in a range of colours and textures was offered (pentaconsix.com)

Kiev B.i.G. / B.i.G.-Six (Brenner):

Not an 88CM: a Kiev-88 with a re-machined twist-lock Pentacon Six mount. The lens goes in with its index at about 10 o'clock and is turned clockwise to lock; there is no locking lever (pentaconsix.com)
An arc-shaped metal bar in the throat presses the lens's aperture pin (pentaconsix.com)
The original B.i.G. has the wind knob, not a crank (pentaconsix.com, on the Wiese conversion that shares its mount)

Hartblei P6 rebuilds (Hartblei 1006C, Hartblei 1006M, Kiev Hartblei 688M):

Hartblei labels, e.g. 'Hartblei 1006c' (pentaconsix.com)
Twist-lock Pentacon Six mount on TRA's 1006C: the lens itself is turned to lock, as on the B.i.G. (pentaconsix.com)
Hartblei film advance crank and strengthened base plate; the base plate's coupling plate is too wide for standard brackets until filed down (pentaconsix.com)
Hasselblad-compatible magazine mount on some (pentaconsix.com; kievaholic.com)

Wiese Pentasix 636 (Hamburg):

PENTASIX label on a Kiev-88 body; twist-lock Pentacon Six mount like the B.i.G.'s (pentaconsix.com)
Wind crank and an extra lever that TRA thinks may be a mirror pre-release (pentaconsix.com)
Volna 80mm in Wiese's own barrel (pentaconsix.com)

Kiev-88CM (Arsenal): The factory camera. TRA at pentaconsix.com explains the mount: the Kiev-88's register is 82.1mm against the Pentacon Six's 74.1mm, so there is no room for a locking ring on the front of the body as on the Praktisix and Kiev-60. Arsenal sank the ring inside the mount and put a lever on it. Because the lens is not turned, an aperture lever at about 8 o'clock holds the diaphragm open, as in a Pentacon Six or Exakta 66, instead of the arc-shaped bar of the twist-lock conversions. TRA guesses that the CM stands for the Russian for "Six mechanism". Russian Wikipedia adds a quieter cloth shutter, a changed magazine design and a changed release button. TRA lists the 88CM as available new from Kiev Camera of Atlanta, Araxfoto, the eBay seller grizzly33bear and DVD Technik.
Arax-CM and Arax-CM MLU (Arax, Kyiv): Arax, the Kyiv firm of Gevorg Vartanyan, sold reworked Kiev medium-format bodies from about 2002 (pentaconsix.com). Russian Wikipedia says the Arax CM is assembled from kits of parts bought from Arsenal's leftover production, with a mirror pre-release, light-absorbing flocking inside and a rebuilt shutter-speed mechanism, which it calls not reliable enough in the original. It also says the later Arax bodies have a magazine mount altered to take Hasselblad magazines. TRA, writing about Arax's cameras, finds the 88CM range "by design inherently less robust than the Kiev 60 design".
Kiev B.i.G. / B.i.G.-Six (Brenner): Announced in 1994 and sold from 1996 by Brenner Spezial Foto-Versand in Germany. Brenner said a group of former Arsenal employees had set up a private company to build it (pentaconsix.com, after Brenner). TRA bought one in the 1990s and reviewed it. Most Schneider lenses for the Exakta 66 do not fit the original mount, because their extra maximum-aperture pin, which every Schneider lens not of f/2.8 carries, fouls it: in his 1998 review TRA could mount only the three 80mm lenses. Grouped here because it takes the same lenses as the 88CM.
Hartblei P6 rebuilds (Hartblei 1006C, Hartblei 1006M, Kiev Hartblei 688M): Hartblei, a Kyiv company, offered modified Kiev-88s from the late 1990s with various combinations of a Pentacon Six twist-lock mount, a Hasselblad-compatible magazine mount, a cloth shutter, a crank and mirror pre-release (pentaconsix.com). Hartblei claimed the re-machined mount took all Schneider Exakta 66 lenses. TRA's 1006C, his B.i.G. rebuilt in Kyiv, did not take the 75–150mm Variogon until the mount was machined again. The owner of a Kiev Hartblei 688M reported the same Flektogon problem TRA had (see the History). camera-wiki shows a Hartblei 1006M; Lothar Braas's Kiev handbook, as quoted by TRA, says Wiese's Pentasix 636 matches the Kiev 1006 M that Hartblei delivered.
Wiese Pentasix 636 (Hamburg): Wiese Fototechnik of Hamburg sold Arsenal-based cameras under the Pentasix name in the 1990s. The name went on both a Kiev-60 and this converted Kiev-88. TRA judges its mount "not as good as" the 88CM's. The Pentasix name also went on a Kiev-60, which keeps the Kiev-60's own breech-lock mount (pentaconsix.com).

Specifications

Format: 6×6cm on 120 roll film in interchangeable magazines · 12 on 120 with the 6×6 magazine exposures
Finder (eye-level): interchangeable metering prism: the TTL/Spot prism with spot measurement, replacing the Kiev-88's centre-weighted TTL prism (Russian Wikipedia); an Arax-CM shown by pentaconsix.com has a newer spot/averaging prism
Finder (waist-level): folding hood with magnifier; oddcameras.com's 88CM has a split-image and microprism screen and a loupe of a different design and housing from the Kiev-88's
Shutter: horizontal-travel cloth focal plane, mechanical; the Kiev-88 has corrugated stainless-steel curtains (Russian Wikipedia; kievaholic.com; pentaconsix.com) · flash sync X at 1/30 (Matt Osborne on the Arax-CM, mrleica.com); hot shoe on the body side · no self-timer
Film advance: wind knob on the left side, which also cocks the shutter and sets the speeds, with a fold-out crank (Russian Wikipedia; kievaholic.com; pentaconsix.com); set speeds only with the shutter cocked, as on every Kiev-88 (oddcameras.com)
Back: interchangeable film magazines with dark slide. Russian Wikipedia says the magazine design was changed for the 88CM, but not whether Kiev-88 magazines still fit it. Arax and Hartblei offered Hasselblad-compatible magazine mounts
Meter: none in the body; metering prism only (TTL/Spot)
Motor drive: Not compatible
Country: Ukraine
Accessories: TTL/Spot metering prism; waist-level finder with magnifier · Adapter for Kiev-88 (В) screw-mount lenses on the Pentacon Six mount; Hartblei made them (oddcameras.com), and Matt Osborne used a small Chinese-made one bought on eBay (mrleica.com) · Hasselblad-compatible and 6×4.5 'New Technology' magazines on Hartblei-converted bodies (pentaconsix.com)

kievaholic.com: most, not all, 88CM kits came with the Spot-TTL prism, and dealers could fit it to a plain Kiev-88 too. On the Kiev-88's TTL prism the meter is not coupled and readings are transferred to the lens and the speed knob by hand (Russian Wikipedia; oddcameras.com); no source describes the Spot prism's coupling separately.

Matt Osborne found the split-image centre of his Arax-CM's waist-level finder dim and hard to focus on a model shoot (mrleica.com)

Where sources disagree

First

1999 — kievaholic.com (2001); oddcameras.com ('one major update in 1999')
'From the 1990s' — Russian Wikipedia, whose source for the cloth shutter is Fotomagazin no. 1–2, 2000

Better supported: 1999

TRA's 1998 mention of an Arsenal 'Kiev SIX' option, if it is the same camera, would put it a year earlier; it is hearsay and not counted.

Film advance

Fold-out crank as standard — kievaholic.com; pentaconsix.com; Russian Wikipedia
Plain knob without a handle — oddcameras.com's photographed example

The crank may have been fitted to some bodies only, or a crank may have been swapped off that example; no source settles it.

What reviewers say

Matt Osborne, MrLeica.com (blog) — Shot an Arax-CM for about a year and enjoyed its hands-on, mechanical feel. He used old Kiev-88 lenses through a small Chinese adapter from eBay on the P6 mount. The waist-level finder's dim split-image centre made focusing hard on a model shoot, and he contrasts the Kiev's 1/30 focal-plane sync with the 1/500 of Hasselblad leaf-shutter lenses. After a Mamiya RZ67 and a Hasselblad 501C he kept the Hasselblad and suggests the Kiev for occasional film shooters on a budget.

History

The Kiev-88CM is the Kiev-88 with the Pentacon Six lens mount. Arsenal in Kyiv built it from 1999, the date kievaholic.com and oddcameras.com give; Russian Wikipedia says only “from the 1990s”. The body is still the Hasselblad-pattern 6×6 SLR that Arsenal had built since the Salyut of 1957 (camera-wiki.org), with a focal-plane shutter, interchangeable magazines and a finder that comes off. The plain Kiev-88 takes only lenses in its own mount, which Arsenal marked with the Cyrillic В: a coarse three-start thread that TRA traces to the Hasselblad 1600F and 1000F. The 88CM instead takes the breech-lock mount of the East German Praktisix and Pentacon Six, of Schneider’s West German Exakta 66 and of Arsenal’s own Kiev-60. That brings in the Carl Zeiss Jena Biometars, Flektogons and Sonnars and the Soviet lenses marked Б.

The mount is the clever part. TRA at pentaconsix.com explains that the Kiev-88 sets its lens 82.1mm from the film, against 74.1mm on the Pentacon Six, which leaves no room for a turning ring on the front of the body. Arsenal sank the ring inside the mount and put a slim lever on it, which shows just behind the lens at about 1 o’clock. The lens goes in with its index at 12 o’clock, is not twisted, and the lever locks it, as the ring does on a Pentacon Six. The other changes are listed by kievaholic.com, TRA and Russian Wikipedia: a black rubberised-cloth shutter in place of the Kiev-88’s bronze-coloured steel, quieter by Russian Wikipedia’s account; a fold-out crank on the wind knob; the release moved to the side; a stronger base plate and tripod socket; changed magazines; and, in most kits, a TTL/Spot metering prism. The example oddcameras.com photographed, numbered 1515, has the plain wind knob, so the crank may not be on every body.

The page also carries the earlier Pentacon Six conversions of the Kiev-88, which take the same lenses but are not 88CMs. Brenner in Germany announced its Kiev B.i.G. in 1994 and sold it from 1996, and reported that former Arsenal employees built it. Hartblei in Kyiv offered rebuilds from the late 1990s, labelled Hartblei 1006C, 1006M or Kiev Hartblei 688M, with cranks, strengthened bases and Hasselblad-compatible magazine mounts. Wiese of Hamburg sold one as the Pentasix 636. All of these use a twist-lock mount: the lens goes in at about 10 o’clock and is turned to lock, and an arc in the throat works its aperture pin. TRA found that most Schneider Exakta 66 lenses would not fit the B.i.G. because of their extra maximum-aperture pin. His Hartblei-rebuilt body took nearly all of them; the 75–150mm Variogon fitted only after the mount was machined again. On his 88CM the Schneider 250mm Tele-Xenar fitted, with care. After the factory, Arax of Kyiv sold the camera as the Arax-CM from about 2002. Russian Wikipedia says these are assembled from Arsenal’s leftover parts and get a mirror pre-release, flocking and a rebuilt speed mechanism. TRA nonetheless judged the 88CM design “inherently less robust” than the Kiev-60’s. Arsenal’s regular production seems to have ended in 2009 (oddcameras.com).

Lens fit is the main thing to check. kievaholic.com says the 180mm Sonnar does not fit without modifying its locking ring. TRA seems to recall some 88CM owners finding the depth-of-field lever on the 50mm and 65mm Flektogons almost out of reach and slow to return, the problem he had on his Hartblei body. A Kiev-88 lens needs an adapter, which Hartblei made. oddcameras.com could not fit its 45mm with one and warns that the aperture may not open fully. Western sellers write the Kiev-88 letter В as “B”, the same as the Pentacon Six Б, so look at the mount rather than the engraving. Late Arsat lenses settle it with a “C” for the Pentacon Six mount.

When buying, tell the bodies apart by the mount first. A locking lever above the lens means an 88CM or Arax-CM. A plain Pentacon Six throat with no lever means one of the twist-lock conversions. A threaded mount with a release button is an unconverted Kiev-88, whatever the listing says. Black cloth curtains confirm the 88CM. Then treat it as any Kiev-88: cock the shutter before changing speed, check the magazines for light leaks and frame spacing, and run the prism on fresh cells. Matt Osborne, who used an Arax-CM for a year, liked its mechanical feel but found the waist-level screen dim to focus. No list price, production figure or weight has been found for the 88CM.

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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.

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