Kodak Retina I (119)

I have purposefully been avoiding Kodak cameras. There are just too many of them and they are mostly towards the bottom end of the market. Kodak seems to have had an obsession with introducing new models - both camera and film. You would think that three or four film formats would suffice but Kodak introduced 36 different film sizes in roughly a century - a new format every eight years. Most of these were only slightly different from each other - sometime only the spool differed not the film, as with 120 and 620. Kodak were the same with their cameras.

Kodak Retina I (119)

However, the Retinas are special. Firstly, they were not designed by Kodak. When Kodak wanted to break into the serious amateur market they bought a German camera manufacturer (Nagel Kamerawerk) and had the good sense to keep Dr Nagal on as the chief designer. Retinas were made from 1934 to 1969 in Germany and this model (Retina I 119) was made from 1936 to 1938. I have used serial numbers to try and get a more precise date of manufacture. The lens was made between September 1935 and May 1936 according to my Schneider serial number list and was engraved with a serial number on 8 January 1936 according to Dave Jentz of the Historical Society for Retina Cameras. The shutter was made between 1935 and 1939 and the serial number is towards the end of that five year range so mid 1938 is my best guess. This means that the camera must have been made in 1938 and so one of the last model 119 to be made. More accurate records of serial numbers are not available from German companies - mostly because records were lost in the bombing in WWII. Dave Jentz has offered to more accurately date the camera body from the body serial number and when I have that information, I will update this blog with it.

This Retina I is very similar to good folding 120 cameras of the day (mid 1930s) and surprisingly similar to Zeiss Ikon's Ikonta 35 of 15 years later (it is also very similar to Balda's Baldina of a few years later).  Hubert Nerwin of Zeiss Ikon claimed to have spent the war years thinking about the design of the Ikonta 35 but I think he just had a quick shifty at a Retina.

Retina 1938

Ikonta 1949

The camera is made from a single aluminium alloy casting. It is covered with black leather (rather than leatherette) which, on this camera, is in excellent condition. The back has the word 'Retina' embossed in the leather in italic script. The exposed parts of the aluminium are enamelled in black. Kodak produced these cameras is twin series - the 119 (this camera) was enamelled in black and the 126 was chrome plated. Otherwise they were identical.

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Blog copyright by John Margetts, 2014
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Retina I (119) back view

The controls on the camera (as opposed to the shutter housing - details later) are nickel plated as is the hinge and catch for the back. As new, this will have looked very good - the soft-blueish nickel against shiny black. Unfortunately, the previous owner stored this camera in a damp place. The nickel plating has corroded leaving a blue/green deposit and some pitting of the metal. On the hinge and catch - both of which are steel - corrosion has allowed the under-laying metal to rust. This has ended with the hinge being rather stiff although it is already getting freer. The controls have cleaned up quite well with Brasso wadding with the exception of the knurled milling on the circumference of the film advance and film rewind knobs., although even those are now much improved.

The one part I find rather strange - finish wise - is the depth of field calculator on the base of the camera. This is made from steel - I would have expected brass on a camera this well designed - and the nickel plating has completely worn off from the edge exposing the steel which is now rusty.

So much for the cosmetics. The controls are what you need on a 35 mm camera. On the right hand end of the top is the film advance knob. Just below this is a clutch lever to allow the film advance to be disconnected for film rewind. Next to the film advance knob is a recessed frame counter. This is not connected to the film advance. Rather, when you press the small button to free the film advance to turn to the next frame, this button also advances the counter by one.

Slightly to the left of centre is the very small viewfinder. This is a reverse Galilean finder and too small to use while wearing glasses. On the left hand end is the rewind knob.

On the base are two items - a tripod boss (the modern standard 1/4 inch Whitworth thread) and a depth of field calculator together with the release button for the lens door. 

Retina I (119) - base of camera showing the focusing knob and aperture knob.

There is no connection between any of these controls and the shutter, so the camera can only advance the film one frame, so no wasted film, but cannot prevent double exposures.

This is a folding camera so the lens/shutter are hidden behind a door. This is released by a button on the base. A spring will open the door about halfway and the user has to open the door fully. The lens/shutter come forward on struts to their operational position. There is a short bellows which are made of lacquered cloth rather than leather - the more durable option. In this case they seem to be light proof but the test film will show for sure.

Retina I (119) lens door open

The lens and shutter are mounted on a square nickel plated plate which is much more attractive than the system used by Zeiss Ikon and Voigtlander. To close the lens door, you have to depress two studs - one on top and one below the square nickel plate. You also need to make sure the lens is focussed on infinity as there is insufficient clearance to close the door is the lens is focussed any nearer.

The lens is a Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar - a four element Tessar copy - which is not coated. Lens coating was around when this camera was made (1938) but was only used on really high end cameras. This lens was very dirty and did not come clean using ROR lens cleaner. As the lens is not coated an was very dirty I took the extreme step of cleaning the glass with Brasso wadding. This was both the external front face of the lens and the internal back face. The glass is now as good as new.

Retina I (119) -  close up of Xenar lens and Compur-Rapid shutter

The lens is mounted on the nickel plate as already mentioned and this means that the camera can be focused by moving the whole lens and not just the front element. this bodes well for image quality. Rather than turning the lens, there is a knob at the bottom of the shutter housing which moves over about 100 degrees to focus the lens. This is easily done by feel with the left hand. Kodak have thoughtfully provided two focus scales, one in black and one in red. The black scale is easily visible when using the camera in portrait mode and the red scale in landscape mode. I have never seen this before and it is very useful. Incidentally, the focusing scale is in feet.

The aperture is also adjusted by a knob at the bottom of the shutter housing and this can be distinguished from the focusing knob by feel. This also has two scales making this camera very easy to use. The aperture range is from f3.5 to f16 - a very usable range. I do not care about having a fast lens as I usually stop down to f8 or f11 and very rarely go as wide as f5.6.

Being a Compur shutter, the cocking lever moves clockwise  (down in this case as it is on the left). As with the focus and aperture scales, there are two shutter release buttons. Kodak have managed this is a very simple and effective way - there is a very short cable release screwed into the cable release socket - by very short, I mean 1 cm in length (see the picture above). I think this is intended to give a reachable shutter release for the right hand in both portrait and landscape positions but it also means there is a convenient release for a left handed person.

The Compur-Rapid shutter offers speeds to 1/500 seconds although received wisdom is that it is nearer to 1/350 in most cases. I have no way of checking and I do not really care - the 1/500 speed is useful and usable and that is what I care about.

Inside is fairly uncluttered. The film cassette goes on the left, there is a single sprocket at the top of the sprocket shaft and there is a fixed take-up spool. The camera's serial number is stamped into the metal of the door close to the hinge.

Retina I (119) inside view.

The only other thing to describe is the depth of field calculator on the base. This is quite simple to use. You rotate the outer ring until the distance you are focused on in against the central mark and then read off the furthest and nearest in-focus distances on the inner ring against the aperture you are using. To me, this is useful to find the hyperfocal distance of the lens at various apertures. To do this, align the infinity distance against the aperture you want to use and read the hyperfocal distance off the central mark - at f16, the hyperfocal distance is 13 feet, so I would focus at 13 feet and have everything between infinity and 8 feet in focus.

Depth of field calculator

Using the Camera (16-6-2014)

I have enjoyed using this camera with the trst film. I am still waiting for the lab to finish developing the film as I managed to get the leader oily by over-enthusiastic lubrication on the film advance mechanism - they wanted permission to sacrifice the first two frames to get an oil-free piece of film to attach to the developing machine.  I should get the processed film in the morning and I will update this essay with the pictures on Thursday, all being well.

The controls are, for the most part, ergonomically placed and easy to use. The one control I found difficult  nearly impossible to use is the aperture control. basically, this is too close to the focusing knob and it is too easy to move both accidentally. In practice, I found it easier to adjust the aperture by moving the pointer on the aperture scale.

What made this camera really easy to use is the provision of two shutter releases. Dr Nagel's intention, I am sure, was to make the camera as easy to use in portrait orientation as it is in landscape orientation. I found it easiest to fire the shutter left-handed even though I am essentially right-handed. For a left-handed person it must have been the best camera around by far.

The viewfinder is very small, as I mentioned above. It is the standard size for viewfinders from all manufacturers until the mid-1950s. It seems strange to me that it should be so. The folding viewfinders on my Zeiss Ikon and Agfa cameras are larger and easier to use and my Zeiss Ikon Icarette has a relatively enormous (glassless) 'sports' finder which is a large (6 x 9 cm) wire frame positioned at the lens' node  with a large enough frame as the eye-piece of the viewfinder. this move in the mid-1930s to enclosed reverse Galilean finders made the cameras significantly harder to use than their predecessors. having said that, the viewfinder is usable once I have removed my glasses - even if I have to compose by shape and line rather than by detail. Or is that an advantage - preventing me from being carried away by the detail?

The need to advance the frame counter before advancing the film soon became second nature and moving the clutch lever from Advance to Rewind before rewinding the film was obvious enough not to cause me any problems.

As I mentioned above, the camera had been stored in a damp place which has caused the cast aluminium body to corrode. An unexpected consequence of this was that, with very little handling, the leather covering came off the body. This was not a failure of the glue (almost certainly shellac) but the disintegration of the metal surface that the leather was glued to. This is not a problem - an application of emery paper to both camera and leather has allowed me to re-glue the leather (with modern plastic glue rather than shellac).

Test photographs:

(All copyright John Margetts)

As usual, these are all from around Lincoln. All the pghotographs are a bit on the bright sie (I have Gimped the version here) which suggests that the shutter is running a bit slow. The shutter is 76 years old so some speed variation is to be expected, perhaps, but the photographs are all exposed within the film's latitude so the camera is quite usable. 

The first picture (Silver Street, Lincoln) shows the effect of using a film in a dirty camera.  I did clean the inside of the camera before loading the film, but as you wind on the film, a very small amount of static electricity is generated - enough to attract any dirt inside the camera onto the film. It is visible in this picture as dark specks. Only this frame was affected.

First frame with statically attracted dirt.

Lincoln railway station

 This next picture has needed to be adjusted for parallax faults - the verticals were converging towards the top of the picture - a lens fault.

The Strait, Lincoln

Lincoln Exchequergate

Southern African buskers in Lincoln's St Benedict's Square

This next shows one of the very few bridges left in Europe with shops on them. In the Middle Ages, this was usual.

High Bridge, Lincoln.

Balda Baldina

This is a very nice folding camera from 1930s Germany.  It is one of the first cameras to use Kodak's 35 film cassette - this was made soon after Leitz made the Leica (1925) and Zeiss Ikon the Contax (1932).  It follows Kodak's lead in producing a folding camera unlike Leitz and Zeiss Ikon who both made rigid 35mm cameras.  The camera is fairly small - it measures 120mm x 82mm x 35mm when closed and 120mm x 82mm x 85mm when open.  It is almost exactly the same size as Voigtlander's later Vito and Vito II cameras but a bit heavier. The covering seems to be leather rather than leatherette.  This is my second Balda camera - the other being a Baldessa from 1965.

lens: Schneider Radionar
focal length: 5 cm
apertures: 3.5, 4.5, 5.6, 8, 11, 16
focus range: 1 metre to infinity
lens fitting: fixed
shutter: compur leaf
speeds: 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/300
flash: no connector
film size: 35mm

Balda Baldina - front view

This camera had been stored somewhere not particularly dry before I bought it and the finish showed the results. The leather was very dry and dull, much of the nickel-plated steel has rusted and the moving parts were all very stiff.  I attacked the leather with Bestbeloved's leather restorer and it is now a bit more subtle and has a nice sheen. Moving parts have had a drop of oil/naphtha mix (I mix 2 parts clock oil with one part naphtha to produce a freely running oil. This flows into hinges and axles easily - and when the naphtha evaporates the part is left with a very small amount of oil) and now move easily. I have yet to deal with the rust but will do so when I have finished the test film. I shall rub down just the rust and then treat it with Loctite Rust Remedy. This leaves a durable black finish which I shall leave as-is. The last thing to note, condition wise, is the presence of 'Zeiss Bumps'. Zeiss Ikon cameras are notorious for these and this is the first time I have seen them on a non-Zeiss Ikon camera. they are caused by the manufacturer using a different material for rivets than he used for the body. A chemical reaction will then be set up in the presence of damp resulting in the build-up of corrosion products between the metal of the body and the leather covering. These 'Zeiss Bumps' occur on the lens door and in the leather by the take-up spool.

Zeiss Ikon and Voigtlander used die-cast aluminium for their camera bodies which made for strength and lightness with the added advantage that they were corrosion resistant.  This camera seems to be made from steel.

The outside is a mixture of leather and nickel plating and where the nickel has worn, the camera is rather rusty. My Zeiss Ikon Nettars from the same decade were leatherette and paint and where the paint has worn you can see the aluminium.

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Blog copyright by John Margetts, 2014
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top view

Balda's use of steel and nickel plating would have made the camera cheaper to make.  I assume that this also meant that the camera was cheaper to buy but it would not have been cheap. With a Compur shutter, it would have been aimed at a serious amateur photographer.

The camera is quite well appointed.  It has a 'proper' viewfinder rather than the metal frames that Zeiss Ikon's Nettars and Ikontas had.  This is small (as was usual even on expensive cameras) and is a reverse Galilean finder (that means it is like a telescope backwards as it makes things small). This viewfinder has a remarkable addition - a parallax adjuster. When you have set the focus on the lens, you put the same distance setting on the viewfinder and the viewfinder moves up or down accordingly. For infinity, the viewfinder is fully up and as you dial in nearer distances, the viewfinder lowers itself. Apart from this camera, I have only ever seen this on expensive rangefinder cameras.

On the top plate along with the viewfinder is the film rewind key and the frame counter. This last is beneath a hinged cover and counts from zero to 36.  This is a count-up counter, the user setting the counter to zero when loading a film into the camera.

Beside the viewfinder is a small button. Pressing this will release the hinged lens cover and the lens will spring forward automatically - it does so with a reassuring 'snap'.  The shutter leaves are between the lens elements so focusing is only front-cell focusing (i.e. only the front piece of glass moves when focusing, not the whole lens. This causes a slight degradation of the image with close-up work. For landscapes it makes not a jot of difference).

base view

The film advance is on the bottom of this camera - possibly to circumvent other manufacturer's patents, certainly not because it makes it easier to use. Advancing the film is not as straightforward as turning the knob (no lever advances at this early date).  Leitz, Kodak and Zeiss Ikon had 35 mm cameras on the market when this camera was designed and each had patented every aspect of camera design they could.  They also pursued patent infringement vigorously. The outcome of this is that manufacturers trying to bring new models to market had to find workarounds to avoid being sued. In this case, the film advance is locked until you press a button on the base of the camera. This must be released as soon as you start turning the film advance knob or you will advance more than one frame. To make this as hard as possible, you first have to push in the safety lever, then press the small button and then turn the advance knob.

Also on the bottom of the camera is a tripod boss.  This is the original 3/8 Whitworth thread rather than the more modern 1/4 Whitworth.  This is to one end of the camera - it seems to have taken camera manufacturers a long time to work out the point of balance of a camera.

Balda Baldina - folded

Inside is pretty much as you would expect even from a modern 35 mm camera - a sign that this layout was well designed from the start and not patented.

The hinged back has effective light baffles and so there is no need for foam light seals - nothing to go gooey and messy with age and nothing to start leaking light. In the centre of the back is the pressure plate to keep the film flat against the film gate. To one end is a nickel-plated spring to keep the film in place on the sprockets. Loading film is easy. There is a spring on the take-up spool under which the end of the film goes. No particular shape of film leader is required but the modern standard leader works fine.

When open, the door hinges on the left, leaving plenty of room for the right hand to have a firm hold. Many folding cameras hinge on the right leaving a restricted space for gripping.  Voigtlander's Perkeo and Vito cameras hinge on the right.

When holding the camera for use, the shutter cocking lever  must be moved upwards (this is a Compur shutter, a Gauthier shutter (Prontor) would need the lever moving downwards). The shutter release provided by Compur is hidden by the folding struts and cannot be reached. To overcome this, Balda have added an angled extension which can be reached by the middle finger of the right hand. There is also a socket for a standard cable release.

position of extension lever

Adjusting the shutter speed is easy - this is a rim-set shutter and you turn the outer ring until the required speed is aligned with the index mark. Altering the aperture is not so easy. The control is close to the door and between the folding struts. This is quite do-able but requires looking at the camera from the front.

I have finished the test film which raised a couple of things.  Firstly, firing the shutter. The extension lever that Balda have added to the Compur shutter release travels a long way before it fires the shutter. I found this rather awkward and difficult to hold the camera steady while doing so. Secondly, rewinding the film.  I have no instruction book for this camera and I have to work things out for myself. I assumed that the button that released the film advance mechanism would also release the rewind mechanism. Wrong! My attempt to rewind the film resulted in me pulling all the film out of the cassette. This meant a trip to Snappy Snaps to ask them to remove the film in their darkroom which they did. I now know that to rewind the film you have to lift the film advance knob and leave that other button alone. Oh well - this is all a part of the fun of collecting old cameras. Tomorrow, I shall collect the developed film and post a selection here.

OK. The test film is back - and none the worse for me trying to rewind it the wrong way - kudos to the staff at Snappy Snaps.  I am impressed with this camera. It was made in 1935 (plus or minus a month or two) and has worked flawlessly. The lens shows no sign of having been coated, which would have been very unusual in 1935, but is not particularly susceptible to flare. There is some flare visible in some of the pictures, but I have a habit of shooting into the light which would have been virtually unheard of in 1935 for the very reason that is causes flare.  The lens focuses well and produces high contrast colour pictures. The lens will have been colour-corrected to some extent as that is necessary for using panchromatic black-and-white film and the lens clearly has no problems with modern colour films.

There are marks on some of the negatives - basically, there are scratches which show up on the prints as black marks. I am putting this down to the damage caused when I attempted to rewind the film. It only affects a few of the negatives, most of them being fine.

The pictures:

Shooting to the south on a sunny day (that is, into the sun), hence the flare.

Shooting to the south again, but on a dull day - a small amount of flare.

Shooting to the north on a misty day. No flare but some mist visible in the upper parts of the picture.

Shooting to the south on a sunny morning - no flare as such.

Shooting to the east on a sunny day.

Shooting in a heavily shaded alley - good contrast and colours.

Serial numbers to help with dating cameras.

This is information that I have collected over the last few years from a number of sources.  Some of those sources contradict each other so I have had to make decisions as to what I wish to keep.  I cannot guarantee its accuracy.

The date a lens or shutter is made is not always the date the camera was made.  Both lenses and shutters are made and sold to camera manufacturers in batches.  A camera made in one year may have a lens made the previous year.  I have at least one camera (Zeiss Ikon Icarette) when the shutter was made the year before the lens.  It is also possible that either the shutter or the lens is a later addition made by a repairer.

Here are the links to the files:

Voigtlander lenses

Schneider lenses

Compur shutters

Carl Zeiss lenses (East and West Germany included)

Olympus Trip

Franka Solida III camera

The first Vintage camera that I bought was a Franka Solida II.  The Solida III is basically the same camera, as you would expect, with a different lens and the addition of a non-coupled rangefinder.

Franka Solida III

The Solida III takes 120 film and produces a 6 cm by 6 cm negative - twelve frames to a roll of film.

lens: Scheider-Kreuznach Radionar
focal length:  80 mm
apertures: f/2.9 to f/22
focus range: 3 ft to infinity
lens fitting: fixed
shutter: Prontor S
speeds: 1 second to 1/250 + B
flash:  PC socket, no X/M switch
film size: 120

The lens is a Scheider-Kreuznach Radionar 80 mm, f/2.9 lens.  This is a bit unusual as the aperture sequence usually goes to f/2.8 rather than f/2.9.  The minimum aperture is f/22 which is more than small enough coupled with the 1/250 shutter speed.  It is probably worth noting that the physical size of the aperture at f/22 on a medium format camera is much larger than f/22 on a 35 mm camera and so diffraction effects are negligible and so give sharper images than an equivalent lens/aperture would with 35mm.  With an APS C format digital camera, the difference will be even sharper.  The test film showed this lens to be better than adequate, at the least.

The shutter is a Prontor S by Gauthier, offering shutter speeds from 1 second to 1/250 plus B.

Happy Snapper settings are indicated in red and are around f/9 and twenty five feet, giving a depth of field from twelve feet to infinity.  There is also a secondary happy Snapper setting of f/9 and eight feet which gives you a depth of field from six feet to twelve feet - presumably for portraits.

There is the usual delayed action lever giving  a delay of around eight to ten seconds.  A PC socket is provided but no synchronisation lever so the flash synch could be either for bulb or electronic flash. Given the camera's age, I suspect it is synced for bulbs but whether for M or F bulbs I do not know.

The rangefinder works well and the two images are nice and clear.  There is enough separation between the two rangefinder windows (43 mm) and there is enough movement on the adjusting wheel to make the device effective.  Unfortunately, as a non-coupled rangefinder, it is necessary to read the distance off the rangefinder and set it on the lens focussing scale.  I find guessing the distance and using a smallish aperture to be fine and I don't think I would use this rangefinder very much.

The other niggle with the rangefinder is that it uses a separate eyepiece to the viewfinder making focussing and composing totally separate activities and further reduces the utility of the rangefinder.

There is a safety interlock between the film winder and the shutter release meaning it is impossible to make a double exposure.  There is a (very) small window beside the film winder which shows red when the film has been wound on.  In fact, it is only necessary to turn the film winder 3/4 of a turn to reset the shutter which is not enough to wind on to the next frame.  Not having a manual for the camera, I had thought the shutter faulty before I finally twigged the purpose of the small window.

The red window on the back which allows you to read the frame numbers has a sliding cover to prevent the fogging of panchromatic film.  Loading is easy.  Both the film spool and the take up spool are contained in hinged housings which hold the film securely until the back is closed.

The pressure plate is significantly larger than the frame size (80 mm wide) which means that the film is kept nicely flat - not always the case with medium format cameras.  The lens standard pops out nicely when the button on the base is pressed - this camera is fully self-erecting.

In use, this is not anywhere as easy as the Franka Solida II.  That camera opens vertically with the baseboard at the bottom under the lens. This Solida III opens sideways so that the baseboard is to the right of the lens when you are using the camera.  This leaves very little camera for the right hand to hold on to which is rather awkward. With the fingers of the right hand curled, it is quite usable and the forefinger drops quite nicely onto the shutter release.

Small items - there is an accessory shoe - cold shoe in flash terms - and a single tripod socket on the base which is to UK/USA standard.  Lastly, the film winder has a film speed reminder on its top, with DIN/ASA numbers from DIN 12/ASA 12 to DIN 24/ASA 200.  On a camera of this age, it is worth noting that the ASA numbers are the "new" ASA scale

Medieval troubadours, Stonebow, Lincoln

Medieval guildhall, Lincoln