I managed to muck up the shutter in the process of cleaning the camera recently so that the aperture would not close down properly. I did not discover that until I had shot a roll of Fuji 200. The aperture malfunction caused some over- exposure and some depth of focus issues. I think I've got the shutter working properly now, and I have my eye on a couple '80s Minoltas on ebay which might work as prism donors. Also had some double exposures toward the end of the roll; not sure what that is about.
Here a couple of shots from the last time I shot the camera which show something of the potential of the Xenon lens:
2 comments:
I've often browsed these Retina Reflex cameras on eBay, but never found one that either looked interesting enough to buy or was priced affordably.
All of the first editions like mine seem to have deteriorated prisms. It is possible to replace them with a prism from an '80s Minolta, but those have gotten kind of hard to come by. The later models apparently don't have that problem, but a leaf shutter on an slr is still a little hard to get used to. The Xenon lens is the same as the IIc and IIIc rangefinders, and is really nice. I may eventually get around to replacing the prism on mine, but I really like my Contaflex1 better. All of the leaf shutter slr cameras are prone to problems because of the complexity of the shutter and apertures linkages.
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