I noticed the Konvas cameras on ebay about a year ago. Ive noticed that every person who is selling one lives outside the U.S. in Europe. I understand the camera is Russian. But I am very cautious of buying items from overseas, especially ones that sell for a grand or more.
About the quality of the images shot with with a konvas. The camera itslef has nothing to do with the quality of the image. That goes for all cameras. All 35mm cameras are capable of producing the same quality of images. Same goes for 16mm and super 8. What gives an image its characteristics is the lens, (which technically is not the camera), lighting, focal length, frame rate, f stop, film stock, lens filtration, processing procedure, and color correction and any other video manipulation of the film-to-video transferred image.
Next, although the konvas cameras are relativiely cheap, keep in mind the skyhigh cost of 35mm stock, processing, and video transfer. A couple hundred feet of exposed and transferred 35mm film will eventually cost more than the konvas camera itslef. This is not a subliminal shot at film by a video lover. I do not shoot video, I shoot film. Im just drawing attention to the high costs of this eternally superior medium.
Also, many of those good images on that website seem to be shot with a telephoto lense, which not all Konvas cameras come with.
I am also curious as to exactly how loud these suckers are. Blimps dont always solve the problem.
Having said all this, I too am intrigued by the camera. But after all said and done, buying this camera and shooting something with it is not really cheap and easily affordable