Kiev II

Arsenal · Contax RF mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, removable back · 1947

Also known as: Kiev 2 · Киев II · Kiev II Arsenal

Variants & identification

Variant	Mount	Years	Serial ranges	Production
Built from German stock	Contax RF	1947–1950	470006, 470010, 470019, 470030, 470033 — the Jena-built bodies at the head of USSRPhoto's early-Kiev serial survey; 470030 and 470033 are logged there as Kiev II prototypes Unnumbered — USSRPhoto records two cameras assembled wholly from Dresden Contax parts behind a Jena-made Kiev front plate, one of them carrying no serial anywhere	No figure published
First model, unnumbered	Contax RF	1947–1948	47058–47491 — the 1947 bodies collected in USSRPhoto's early-Kiev serial survey, several logged there as Contax-to-Kiev conversions 48323–481814 — the 1948 bodies in the same survey, five- and six-digit numbers running side by side	403 cameras in 1947 and 1,400 in 1948 (Ivan Zotikov, Kosmo Foto)
No-name Kiev	Contax RF	1947–1958	—	No figure published
Kiev 2A	Contax RF	1955–1958	—	No figure published

No Arsenal serial table has ever been published. Every list of Kiev serials in circulation is a collector-compiled survey — USSRPhoto's early-Kiev pages are compiled from members' cameras, dealer stock, eBay sightings and Westlicht auction results — and a USSRPhoto contributor's summary of the 1951–57 period is that the factory archives are not publicly accessible.
Production span, three ways: this entry gives 1947–1955; USSRPhoto and Sovietcams both give 1947–1957; Peter Hennig dates the start of official Arsenal production to 1949, the 1947–48 cameras having been built at Jena. fotoussr.ru splits the difference — production from 1947, but Arsenal making all the components itself only from 1949.
Quantity: Sovietcams gives ±100,000 units for the Kiev II and ±80,000 for the Kiev IIA, and USSRPhoto repeats the Kiev II figure from Sovietcams. Neither is traced to an Arsenal document.
Kiev 2A dating, four ways: this entry gives 1955–1958; USSRPhoto's catalogue gives 1955–1959; Sovietcams gives 1951–1959; Peter Hennig has a small pre-production run of flash-synchronised Kiev 2 in 1954 and the official introduction of flash sync, as Kiev 2A and Kiev 3A together, in the middle of 1956.
USSRPhoto notes that the Kiev 2A carries a new double-name logo and that some late Kiev 2 bodies carry it too, so the logo alone does not settle which camera is in hand.
The No Name Kiev that collectors argue about is a later and different camera from the unmarked Kiev II above: Peter Hennig dates it to 1963 and identifies it by a serial beginning 63 and a flash sync on the left front of the body. USSRPhoto catalogues a first version of 1963 and a second of 1964.
The German cameras that precede the Kiev were not built at Jena but at Saalfeld, about an hour away, and the Zeiss Historica literature is specific about it. Three complete assembly lines were rebuilt there from what could be salvaged from Dresden, and Zeiss employees assembled Contaxes on them under Soviet observation; in October 1947 the workers were sent on a fortnight's holiday, and returned to find all three lines dismantled and on a train to Kyiv along with the factory's furniture, wiring, furnaces and walls. On Werner Widder's first-hand account, given in Zeiss Historica volume 25 number 1 of spring 2003, assembly from left-over parts went on at Saalfeld until at least 1950.
What the Saalfeld cameras were numbered, and how many there were. Zeiss Historica volume 21 number 1 of spring 1999 puts their serials roughly between 6000 and 30000, in a sequence with large gaps and no consecutive runs, and volume 33 number 1 of spring 2011 records at least one case of the same number used twice. Just over 100 were documented as of 1999, against a best estimate of about 1,200 made, which the summarising account itself calls speculation on incomplete information. These are Zeiss numbers on Zeiss-built cameras and belong to none of the Arsenal sequences above.
A price for the earliest cameras, which no other source consulted gives. Zotikov puts the net price in 1947–48 at 5,479 roubles against an average salary of 500, and traces the figure to an archive document published for the tenth anniversary of the start of production. The first batches went to journalists, photographic workshops and government delegations rather than to shops; Nikita Khrushchev, then leading Soviet Ukraine and a keen photographer, visited the Arsenal plant and was given one.
A dating trap the serial cannot show. Zotikov reports that a great many early cameras were later taken back into the factory's reclamations area and modernised — some given an exposure meter, some a flash sync contact added to the body — and reckons that perhaps only dozens of the several hundred built survive untouched. A Kiev II wearing a feature the variant table dates to 1955 may therefore be a 1947 camera that went back to Kyiv, and the body number will not say so.
The reparations background, from the Zeiss side. Ghisetti puts the Jena output diverted to the Soviet Union by the SMAD administration at 14,300 pieces across 1945–46 and 24,000 in 1947, and describes the Contax Jena as a camera built from warehouse remnants that forms the link between the Contax II and the Kiev — which is the same camera the variant table above calls the German-parts Kiev, approached from the other end of the transfer.
What corroboration did and did not reach. The account of what these cameras are — Contax II tooling and German parts, assembly beginning in 1947, the restamped Contax faceplate, the year-first serial convention, the unnumbered cameras, the export reason for the no-name bodies — is now carried by sources independent of USSRPhoto: the Zeiss Historica newsletters as summarised by Mike Eckman, and Ivan Zotikov writing in Kosmo Foto. The serial survey itself is not. Every specific Kiev serial quoted in this entry still comes from USSRPhoto's collector-compiled early-Kiev pages, and no second published survey of Arsenal serials was found. Camerapedia is not a check on camera-wiki either: it is the same body of text under a different name, and agreement between them counts once.

How to tell them apart (expand)

A 90mm rangefinder base — the prewar Contax's, which the West German IIa gave up
One window for focusing and framing
Cyrillic Киев on the front

Built from German stock:

Assembled from parts the Soviets brought from Dresden
Cameras are reported with the original Contax nameplate beneath the Kiev shield
The earliest bodies carry an oblique engraved inscription, in two forms distinguished by where the lower tail of the K in Kiev sits

First model, unnumbered:

The earliest Arsenal cameras, catalogued by collectors as Kiev No.1

No-name Kiev:

No Kiev shield or maker's marking — an export or presentation variant

Kiev 2A:

Flash synchronisation added

Built from German stock: camera-wiki reports the underlying Contax plate as something collectors have found rather than as a documented practice. It is the most direct physical evidence of what these cameras are. Mike Eckman, summarising the Zeiss Historica newsletters, describes the same thing more precisely and slightly differently: the faceplates were not Contax plates hidden under a Kiev shield but Contax plates restamped, so that "when these parts are removed, the backside still shows the indentations of the Contax name on the underside". Ivan Zotikov adds that from May 1947 to February 1948 the Kyiv plant had no equipment and no technical documentation at all — only the assembly area worked, on parts brought by rail from Carl Zeiss in eastern Germany, with missing pieces made on site.
No-name Kiev: Unmarked Kievs are also the raw material for faked Contaxes, so an unbranded body is worth approaching from both directions at once. Mike Eckman gives the reason the name was left off in the first place: a lawsuit awarded the Contax name to the West German Zeiss Ikon AG, and the Soviet and East German makers could use it only for sale inside their own countries, so a camera bound for West Germany, North America or the rest of Europe had to leave the front plate bare. That is the same reason the East German Contax reflexes were exported as Pentacons. He notes that unmolested no-name bodies fetch a premium, so re-engraving one with the Contax name devalues it.

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 for an Arsenal Kiev: the first two digits of the serial are the year of manufacture, and the number is engraved on the accessory shoe. 47367 is 1947; 5702683 is 1957. The digit count grows with output — five digits in 1947, six from 1948, seven by the later 1950s — so only the leading pair can be read, never the length. CameraQuest states the rule for Kiev bodies and Kiev-mount lenses alike, and camera-wiki dates a body from "63 27943" the same way. The Zeiss Historica literature confirms the convention from the German end and from before the Kiev name was used: Mike Eckman, summarising it, records that some Jena-built Contaxes carry two sets of numbers, the first a Zeiss serial and the second "a Soviet-type number in which the first two digits indicate the year it was made (for example 47xxxx)".
A- and B-letter prefixes: Some bodies of the late 1940s and early 1950s carry a letter before the digits. The year still reads from the two digits that follow the letter. USSRPhoto's Kiev III lists run A51799 to A555863 and B540221 to B545494 — 1951 to 1955, and 1954 throughout. The survey records the prefix on a Kiev II as well, A480123 of 1948.
470006, 470010, 470019, 470030, 470033: The five earliest bodies in USSRPhoto's early-Kiev serial survey, all assembled at Jena rather than in Kyiv: two logged as Jena Contax II, one as a Jena Contax III, and the last two as Kiev II prototypes. Two of the five carry a second number after a slash. That second number is not an oddity of the survey: the Zeiss Historica account of the Jena cameras, as summarised by Mike Eckman, describes exactly this doubling — a Zeiss number followed by a Soviet-type year-first number — as one of the marks of a genuine Jena-built body.
47058–47491: The 1947 Kiev bodies collected in USSRPhoto's survey. Most are paired there with a collapsible ZK 50mm f/2 whose own serial carries the year in the same way, either written out (ZK1947/000261) or run together (ZK 4903445 for 1949). Zotikov explains why body and lens numbers on these cameras have nothing to do with each other: the first standard ZK 50mm lenses for the Kiev came from the KMZ plant, not from Arsenal, so cameras with consecutive body numbers carry lenses from an unrelated sequence. He puts this arrangement on cameras of 1947 to 1950.
48323–481814: The 1948 bodies in USSRPhoto's survey. 48323 and 481104 are both 1948 cameras — the sequence after the year was simply padded wider as output rose, which is why the leading pair is the only reliable part of the number.
No number anywhere: Some of the earliest cameras were never numbered. Peter Hennig records roughly 2,000 Contax cameras built at the Zeiss Jena factory in 1947, a few of them wearing the KIEV name, plus an unknown further number assembled unofficially from smuggled parts and left numberless for the black market. USSRPhoto describes two surviving cameras built entirely from Dresden Contax parts behind a Jena-made Kiev front plate; one has no serial at all, only a scratched 13 on the shutter housing. The Zeiss Historica literature records unnumbered cameras independently: on Eckman's summary of it, some confirmed genuine Jena-built Contaxes "have been found with no serial numbers at all", and the absence of a number is explicitly not taken to disqualify a camera.
A serial younger than the camera: The second of those two Dresden-parts cameras carries an Arsenal serial reading 1953, engraved above the Contax shoe. USSRPhoto's reading is that a crate of early cameras was found in the factory warehouse and numbered when it was finally sold — so on this batch the serial dates the engraving, not the assembly. It is the one documented way a Kiev serial can be younger than the camera under it.
5702683: A 1957 Kiev II catalogued on USSRPhoto with no rangefinder inside the viewfinder and no self-timer, taken there as a probable scientific or military order.
The rule is Arsenal's, not the Soviet Union's: It does not carry across to the other plants. Oscar Fricke's Zorki table places a change in KMZ's serial numbering method between 605411 and 5503595: before it the numbers run sequentially from 00070, after it they read year-first (5569998, 56042413). A Zorki or a FED is dated from a published table; an Arsenal Kiev is dated from the number itself.

Specifications

Format: 24×36mm on 35mm film, removable back
Finder: Combined viewfinder and coupled rangefinder
Base length: 90 mm
Shutter: vertical-travel metal slat · B, 1 – 1/1250
Country: Ukraine

Where sources disagree

Where the earliest German-built cameras were assembled

Saalfeld, about an hour from Jena, on three assembly lines rebuilt from Dresden salvage — the Zeiss Historica newsletters as summarised by Mike Eckman
Jena — USSRPhoto's early-Kiev survey, which logs its five earliest bodies as Jena-built, and Peter Hennig, who counts Contaxes built at the Zeiss Jena factory

Better supported: Saalfeld

The two may be a single claim loosely stated rather than a real conflict: Saalfeld sat inside the Jena works' orbit, and collectors have long called the cameras Jena Contaxes whatever building they came out of. The Zeiss Historica account is the only one consulted that names a town and describes the plant, and it rests on a worker who was there.

How many German-built cameras were made

About 1,200, with just over 100 documented as of 1999 — Zeiss Historica volume 21 number 1, spring 1999, as summarised by Mike Eckman
Roughly 2,000 built at the Zeiss Jena factory in 1947, plus an unknown further number assembled unofficially from smuggled parts — Peter Hennig
3,800 ordered for September 1946 to March 1947, of which only a small portion was actually built — Zeiss Historica volume 23 number 1, spring 2001

The three figures are not measuring the same thing. The last is a production order rather than an output, the first is an estimate the source itself calls speculation, and Hennig's counts cameras that were assembled unofficially as well as officially. That so few survive is the argument against the larger numbers.

What reviewers say

Serial Foreigner, a 1955 Kiev II (blog) — "The engineering is several steps beyond" the other Soviets: a bayonet catch that stops the lens unscrewing as you focus, and a base wide enough for accurate focus inside a metre. The rewind button on the base gets pressed by accident and double-exposes, and the rangefinder window sits right under the release.
Ivan (USSRs Phototechnics), Kiev-2 (blog) — "Kiev-2 was simply an unrealistically cool device in terms of technical excellence": the 90 mm base, largest of any Soviet camera, a bright rangefinder patch, a folding stand and a self-timer. The speed numbers around the knob are tiny, and the middle finger lands on the rangefinder window until the hold is learned.

History

The Kiev II is a Contax II made in Kyiv. Not a copy in the sense that the Canon and Nicca Leicas were copies — this is the same camera, built on the tooling and drawings that Soviet forces removed from the Zeiss Ikon works in Dresden in 1945, by a workforce that included relocated German personnel. The earliest cameras are said to have been assembled from German parts brought east, and collectors report examples with the original Contax nameplate still underneath the Kiev shield.

It keeps what the West German Contax IIa gave up. The rangefinder base is 90mm, as on the prewar camera, where the IIa’s is 73 — so through the 1950s the more precise Contax was the one made in Kyiv, and the German one was the compromise.

The Kiev 2A of 1955 adds flash synchronisation. Everything else about the camera is 1936.

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 II with the Jupiter-8 — Runner1616, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Live listings

Rare Kiev II NO NAME Camera made for Export 1964 Y. — €949.00 · Arsenal Photo · likely no-name
Kiev II 1947 &ndash; one of the very first Kiev cameras produced in Soviet Ukraine. — €5,000.00 · Arsenal Photo
Arsenal Kiev II 1951 Rangefinder Camera #510747 W/ 5cm f2 #5007666 Marked 1951 — $180.00 · eBay
rangefinder camera Kiev-2 №5619345 — $299.00 · Uralseller (Alex)

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