Thursday, February 20, 2014

Europe and America

I got some nice shots from my first Kodak Duo Six-20, but it developed a problem with the shutter linkage which ended up damaging the shutter.  I replaced some of the shutter parts recently and took the camera along on a walk to the Tingley Beach ponds in Albuquerque.  I was pleased to see that everything seemed to be working properly again.





As I reported in the previous post, I have a second Series II camera, seen below on the right, which is an example built for the European market with distance scale marked in meters and a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens.  On the left is my American market camera with a distance scale in feet and a Kodak Anastigmat lens.


Some slight differences can be seen in the lens mounts of the two examples, but I think the lens formula is essentially the same -- four elements in three groups.  A comparison of the images from the two cameras show no differences in quality that I can see.

2 comments:

Jim said...

If the lenses perform similarly, seems like the one with the faster shutter is the one to use. America FTW!

Mike said...

Forced to make a choice, that's probably the one I would make. Given the trivial prices of old film cameras, the real limiting variable is the number of niches in my house into which I can stuff cameras.

I actually seldom use the fastest speeds in my cameras without focusing aids. My usual procedure is to give priority to small apertures so as to maximize depth of focus, and minimize distance estimation errors.

Another issue with the old Compur shutters is that once you choose the top speed and cock the shutter, you cannot change the speed without risking some damage.