Thanks for the video, Huss. It's great to hear the stories from the great photographers while they're still able to tell them.
Nice Retina 1 (Type 010)
From the mid 1930's through the late 1950's Retinas were made as high quality alternative to Leica or Contax. The folding design made them pocketable, they came with a Schneider or Rodenstock lens and Kodak sold a lot of them.
Yeah those older Kodak were primo cameras. I had a Kodak Retina Reflex (I think made in Germany) and the quaity was superb. They went from that to plastic 110 cameras...
My first two cameras were Kodaks as well, both of them hand-me-downs from my older brothers. I started with a Brownie, and then when one of my brothers got an SLR (Yashica) he gave me his Kodak Retinette. I don't have any photos that I took with the Brownie but I do still have a few from the Retinette and they were good; it had a nice Schneider Krueznach lens.
I went a little crazy on Kodak Retina Reflex cameras (and lenses). Bought a bunch of broken ones with the intention of restoring one of each model - the S, III, and IV. During the rebuild of the III my eyes went bad. Only finished the S - which I thought was the best looking. I've adapted the lenses to Nikon F mount and Canon EF, and they are very good - though slow by today's standards.
James Markus wrote:
I went a little crazy on Kodak Retina Reflex cameras (and lenses). Bought a bunch of broken ones with the intention of restoring one of each model - the S, III, and IV. During the rebuild of the III my eyes went bad. Only finished the S - which I thought was the best looking. I've adapted the lenses to Nikon F mount and Canon EF, and they are very good - though slow by today's standards.
That’s the one I had! With only the standard lens though. Just could not get used to the baseplate film advance lever, but what a nice camera.
This very small Zeiss Ikon SLR Contaflex-II has a very sharp 45mm f2.8 Carl Zeiss Tessar lens. A thrift shop find requiring only a minor repair - everything works.
