Hi David,
Many thanks for the article, really enjoyed reading it, made perfect sense, rang true and made me smile.
Not sure if I am the "one other" that you mentioned, but if not then that makes three.
As far as I know my Kiev 60 is a non Arax, non modified version which I purchased off Ebay and came as the full set complete with its carry case.
It does tend to suffer from overlap that you mentioned, but a very simple home work around has cured that, and it seems to have no other problems. I love your description that it is "rather heavy", a perfect understatement. You describe the shutter as a clonk to me its a clunk, but what's an o or a u between friends
The clonk / clunk has to heard to be believed, but I think it sounds great.
I have a set of extension tubes which I used to take the pictures in my macro album, and a telephoto that I still have to try out.
Yes this is an SLR on steroids, yes it has a few problems, yes it is a heavy beast of a camera, yes it is probably a "Marmite" camera but I am rather fond of mine.
All I can say is that they are an acquired taste, but once you have the taste they become most palatable
Ian