Self Healing Kiev

As I have written about before, I recently purchased a Soviet Made medium format camera called a Kiev 60 (made by Zaphod Arsenal, located in the Former Soviet Republic of Ukraine). When I purchased it, it had one problem, the film advance counter did not function properly. It worked fine with no film loaded, but with film loaded, it would count up to "1", and then stop, just staying on "1" for the entire roll of film. The problems were: 1) You never knew what picture you were on, so you weren't sure when you had taken the last picture, and 2) since the camera mechanist always thought it was on picture "1", it didn't advance the film properly (the Kiev 60 advances each picture a little less than the last, to make up for the fact that as the film winds onto the takeup spool, the diameter increases, so by rotating a little less, the pictures are all evenly spaced), so I only got 11 pictures instead of 12 on a roll of 120 film.

Well, part way through my third roll of film, the film advance counter up and started to work. Now, I have put in my fourth roll of film, and the counter is working just fine. I have read that the Kievs like to be used, and that quite a few of the problems they have miraculously disappear after some usage, but I never really believed it until now...