>>3935388Kiev/Contax, I have one. The lenses are super cheap because it's an orphan mount but find one that's sorted out. Most of them have the leatherette peeling off by now. The shutter ribbon replacement on those is a huge bitch, see if it has been done. The viewfinder is a bit dim, at least on my copy which was made in the 70s. I do love mine though and there are plenty of sorted out minty copies out there.
They do shuffle shit back and forth across the Atlantic but if you're already in Europe you'll be better off.
Fed/Zorki, I already said my peace on those. The 2c is my preferred flavor of Zorki, good VF, good RF base, the general rule of thumb with Soviet stuff is to find export models and find anything made before Leonid Breznev took power which would be early 1970s. There is a specific reason for this, anything produced during his reign of power was made under his 5 year plan of production numbers and not quality. In the 50s and 60s Communism had something to prove so they were built high quality, my Jupiter-3 50mm f1.5 is built every bit as well as some of my newer Voigtlander stuff and it is a 1962 lens. My Leningrad is built as well as my friend's Leica M6, they also cost as much as a Russian car back in the 1960s. 1955-1965 is the sweet spot for Soviet cameras. There's exceptions to every rule, and in this case it is the FED-5c, because they were made post-Communism and most are export models. Export models are built to higher quality and higher QC standards.
Bessa R3A is fucking based and you can adapt M39 LTM glass to M mount
Nikon, good luck finding one under 500 bucks, they're not cheap
