Photos: Michael Elliott / 35mmc
In this week’s Film Friday, photographer Michael Elliot describes his love/hate relationship with the mechanically quirky Kiev 60 TTL, a Soviet-era medium format evolution/knockoff of the East German Pentacon Six. Manufactured in Ukraine from 1984 to 1999, it shoots 6x6cm images and features swappable viewfinders, an unpredictable film advance mechanism, a mirror box prone to heavy flare and one of the loudest SLR mirrors known to humankind.
This clunker of an SLR is as unwieldy to handle as it looks; Michael aptly describes it as a ‘Soviet tank of a camera’. But despite his many frustrations, the Kiev 60 TTL is the camera that made him fall in love with medium format photography, and that’s priceless. Moreover, it’s a camera he still enjoys shooting with, even if it wouldn’t be his first choice to lug around for an entire day – it weighs 1.5 kg / 3.3 lb without a lens.
Click the link below for Michael’s full review of the camera, including comically detailed accounts of its ‘quirks’, as well advice for anyone crazy enough to pick one up.
Read – 35mmc: Kiev 60 TTL medium format SLR review
About Film Fridays: We recently launched an analog forum and in a continuing effort to promote the fun of the medium, we’ll be sharing film-related content on Fridays, including articles from our friends at 35mmc and KosmoFoto.