Krasnogorsk K3 questions...

[chrisgavin]

OK, my ebay Krasnogorsk K3 has just arrived.
My first impressions are that this is a very solid piece of engineering, hopefully a bit more robust than the Kiev Alpha16 I was not having such a great time with...

But I have a couple of questions for any K3 owners out there...

I have the kit zoom lens (this is the screw fit M42) model...
Firstly, I found the lens hard to fit, and the thread of the lens mount not very easy to turn.
But I got there and now the lens is mounted seemingly as far in as it goes...

I zoom in in something far away, set the focus and the eyepiece focus .
Then when I zoom back, the distance objects should stay in focus right?
But they don't. The lens doesn't seem to hold focus across the zoom range.
I had hope to use this method to focus on everything, so I find this a bit disturbing.
I remember from some old broadcast video cameras there was something called 'back focus'. When this was wrong, a zoom lens wouldn't hold focus across the zoom range. It's as if the K3 has the incorrect back focus, but I can't see how one would adjust for this...

My second question is about the light meter.
The camera came with a little brass battery adaptor. There is a battery in there but it is probably dead.
I don't see any light meter needle at all in the viewfinder.
Is this normal for a dead battery, or would I expect to see the needle at all?
If I want to buy the modern batteries that fit this adaptor, which ones and where (I'm in the UK) would be best to buy them from please?

Many thanks for any helpful advice team : )

[Will2]

Do you have a decent rental house near where you could have a tech put it on a projector? It does sound like the back focus is out. That involves some serious work with shims to make tiny adjustments. Rental houses usually have lens techs who's job it is to do this. Good news is that when it's in focus, it's in focus. I usually zoom in, get focus then zoom out so it wouldn't work for me. I just had a Zeiss 10-100 adjusted and it's not a do-it-yourself thing.

I would suggest picking up a Pentax M42 35mm lens and trying that. Some of the sharpest 16mm images I ever got was with a K3 and a 50mm Pentax.

I never used the meter; I don't think many people do. Even if it did work I wouldn't trust it. Best always to use a hand meter.

[chrisgavin]

Thanks Will,

I've had the lens of and on again, and it's looking better now!
Maybe I just hadn't mounted it on properly the first time around.

Also when I get the camera home I do have a few M42 Pentax-mount prime lenses, so I'll try those on it too to make sure the focus is looking good through those.

I'd heard the internal light meter isn't used much by K3 users, but I think I'd like to pop in a fresh battery anyway, even just to find out if it works at all.
I've just found all the instructions on the k3camera.com website, so I'll maybe get some of those cheap hearing aid batteries just to check the meter out.
The camera came with a small and very old looking Japanese light meter (Which I'm yet to figure out) and I've also got an Android app light meter to try out too.

I'm hoping to get out in the next week or two to shoot some first tests.
I've been planning to try out some 16mm for a while now, so I've already got some Fuji colour and Kodak BW neg ready to use.

[Nicholas_C]

My second question is about the light meter.
The camera came with a little brass battery adaptor. There is a battery in there but it is probably dead.
I don't see any light meter needle at all in the viewfinder.
Is this normal for a dead battery, or would I expect to see the needle at all?
If I want to buy the modern batteries that fit this adaptor, which ones and where (I'm in the UK) would be best to buy them from please?

Hi Chris,
I have two K3's (a bit excessive i know!) The original bayonet version and an M42 super 16 modified one with the recentered lens mount.
I've only used them a couple of times several years ago but I'm hoping to shoot something this summer.
I think they're great cameras for the price and love the fact you don't need batteries.
My M42 K3 has a sticky needle in the lightmeter and doesn't work too well but my bayonet model works fine. I used the model battery seen in the pic below and used a metal bolt to make the connection in the battery housing.
To turn the lightmeter on you have to turn the small dial in the middle of the film speed dial with your finger. I think the needle is off to the right usually and should be out of sight until the lightmeter is switched on.

all the best ,
Nick