silver wrote:
For what you would end up spending for the Kiev crap, you could buy a Mamiya RB6x7 camera in excellent condition. People are having problems selling their Mamiya equipment so the prices are extremely low. The lenses can also be obtained for ridiculously cheap prices and the quality is really high.
You want to look for the ProS model which had the film/shutter interlocks. Also ask about the felt seals on the film backs. In lenses, you want to look for the "C" type, which were better coated/more contrast. In the RB's a 90mm/127mm is a standard lens, 65mm is wide angle. The 150 soft focus (make sure you get the disks) and the 180 make very nice portrait lenses. The RB's (and a lot of the 6x6 and 6x7's) used a leaf shutter in the lens. The top shutter speed was 1/400 and was rarely accurate, although the slower speeds were usually close enough. The RZ's used an electronic shutter, but I think they're still spendy since you can fit them with a Leaf back.
The RB was really a studio camera. I dragged mine into the field as it also made an awesome landscape camera but I got a good workout doing so. The 645's are way easier to handle, but I wanted a bigger step up from 35mm. There is NOTHING like looking down into that ground glass with both eyes. The 6x7 negs are pretty amazing too.