I took a long walk down by the river on Monday morning with my Kodak Retina Reflex and its newly installed prism. I thought it turned in a stellar performance. Of course, it is a little hard to be completely objective when you bring a camera back to life. The fact that it makes pictures at all seems somewhat miraculous, particularly when you are a rather clumsy repairman like me. On the other hand, I have a Retina II, a Retina IIa and a Retina IIc that have the same Xenon lens as the Reflex, and they also make excellent images. So, I think I'm on safe ground to claim that the Retina Reflex performs equally well in that respect. The other thing those Retinas have in common are extraordinarily quiet shutters. Even more surprising in the Reflex model is the fact that the mirror and aperture stop-down mechanism do not seem to add any noise to the exposure process. Below are some pictures of the recent outing. The camera out-performed the photographer by a substantial margin, but I'm working to catch up.
6 comments:
The photo of the duck is stunning. The water is positively inky!
I liked that one too. It shows both the good resolution of the Xenon lens as well as the nice quality which Kentmere 100 can deliver.
Ok...you've inspired me! I'm sending my Retina IIc off for CLA after the first of the year.
Good move. The IIc is probably the best of the Retina bunch in many ways. I got mine from Australia about 15 years ago when international postal rates were still tolerable. It was nearly flawless and has always performed faultlessly when called on.
Do you have any of the other lens units (35mm and possibly 85mm?)? Is this the type of shutter arrangement where you remove the front lens group and replace it with the wide-angle or short tele front groups?
Right, this first model of the Reflex had the shutter between the lenses and the front lens group has a bayonet mount which allowed the use of accessory wide-angle and telephoto lenses. It is basically the same system used on the IIc rangefinder, though not so awkward in use. The Reflex S had the shutter moved back and the whole lens was replaceable. I likely won't try to find the accessory lenses.
My Contaflex, also a leaf shutter model, has a similar system, though it requires the use of a bracket to hold the accessory telephoto lens in front of the objective without removing the front lens group.
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