Thursday, December 29, 2011

Shooting the Kodak Retina II







My 1949 Retina II was made for the European market as evidenced by the distance scale in meters. The leather camera covering is perfect, with none of the Zeiss bumps which have appeared under the skin of many of my other old cameras. When I got the camera the bellows was detached at the rear, but that was easily repaired with a bit of glue. It did take me quite a few tries, however, to get the shutter cleaned and operating properly. The f2 Xenon lens is faultless and perhaps the sharpest I have on any of my Retinas.


The pictures here were shot recently on Fomapan 100. I really like the film's grain and tonalities, and the cost is less than $2 per roll. Unfortunately, quite a few frames are marred by some squiggles that span the image's width which appear to be a manufacturing fault.

2 comments:

robert said...

I think that is a 65-66 Plymouth Fury, could be an old police cruiser with that spot light on the driver door. Can't beat that winter light for detail and shadows.

Jim said...

It's a 65 Fury. Nice find.