Originally posted by stevebrot One other thing to consider/remember. The first is to make sure you have a couple of take-up spools. The second is to pick up a few of the proprietary film canisters if they have them. I can't say whether it is typical of all Kiev, but a standard canister in my Kiev 4 camera fits too "low" in its space to allow a properly-aligned film path. This can cause problems on both ends. Ideal is to have the special canisters on both ends despite the clumsiness and trouble to load.
It's likely typical to all Kievs, and would all trace back to Zeiss.
The 135 film cannister is a bit of a compromise design: a way for Kodak to sell 35mm film in a format that fit multiple 35mm cameras, all with incompatible cassettes. So while Kodak designed the cannister to work in the Contax, Zeiss did not design their cameras specifically for it.
Rather, the Contax was intended to be mainly used with either film loaded into those reusable cassettes or with Zeiss-produced paper-wrapped spools. The main reason this matters is because, while the film itself was the same, the core of those Zeiss spools was just a tiny bit taller than 135.
(Kodak designated Zeiss-style rolls "235 film" during the period that they also produced them. They were effectively a perforated 35mm version of 220. Kodak also sold "435 film" at the time, which was also a paper-wrapped spool but with the leader cut with a "Leica tongue" — something that anyone who's shot a bottom-loading FED or Zorki will probably immediately appreciate.)
In my experience most of the time it's not really an issue, but if you've ever noticed sprocket holes creeping into the bottom of your images, that slight difference is why.
The Kiev also maintains one other holdover from those Zeiss spools. Ever notice those 2 red dots on the shutter release? If you hold down the release button and give it about a quarter turn counter-clockwise so that the dots no longer line up, it will lock in place and the shutter dial can be turned without stopping. (IIRC the shutter will still fire. It will just do so immediately.) This was intended to allow quick advancement past the paper leader found on those 235 spools.
Edit: Actually, there's a question: does the Kiev still have a red dot around the 27th frame on the counter dial? From that red dot to the 36th frame roughly corresponded to the length of the paper leader.
I want to say that Soviet film was sold for a while with a paper leader, so it wouldn't surprise me if that counter dot remained, but the Soviet Union is one of the countries that I have never shot expired film from so I can't say for sure.