In my previous post I waxed lyrical about my recently-acquired Kiev 4. While I stand by my earlier statements about what it’s like to use, I found the camera had one small issue that needed addressing.

Putting aside any comments about my composition and exposure, it’s pretty clear from these photos that somehow stray light was getting into the camera.

The back was obviously light-tight as the entire film wasn’t fogging, and the position of the bright patches led me to believe that the light was coming in through the top of the camera.

With nothing else for it I gathered some tools, trawled the depths of the Wayback Machine to find a long since deleted online how-to guide and got stuck in.

Apart from one screw that was fairly well-adhered the two halves of the camera came apart without too much trouble, and upon inspection it was clear that time had not been kind to the Kiev.

The glue holding the original light seals had failed, which meant the yak hair twine wasn’t able to do its job and the film was being exposed to the full luminosity of the Sun.

This is a trivial fix, and so armed with some self-adhesive foam I set about fixing these chinks in the camera’s armour.

It was also here that I made a mistake, being a little gung-ho with my repairs I applied so much foam around the edges that the top casing would not re-seat properly.

After fixing that problem all that was left was to clean and re-assemble the camera, and it was here I made my second mistake, dropping and losing one of the last screws to be put back into place.

Unable to find it after many minutes of searching, I decided to soldier on and use the camera without it, as normal operation seemed to be unaffected.

After shooting a test roll of Kentmere 100 and waiting the entirety of my local film lab’s three-day processing period with bated breath, I was relieved when I saw the contents of the Dropbox link they sent.

You can check out more of my photography here.