The Retina II Saves The Day

I went to Albuquerque's Botanic Garden intending to make some pinhole images.  However, the Vario shutter on the camera would not work on the Bulb setting.  Luckily, there was still half a roll of Arista 200 in the Retina II in my pocket.

The Kodak Retina II is a transitional design that bridged the pre- and post-war eras.  The six-element Xenon lens is coated, but the camera still retains the manual shutter cocking.  On the plus side, the viewfinder has auto parallax correction, something lacking in later Retina models.

I haven't shot a lot of film in the Retina II, but it has always performed marvelously after fixing a string of minor age-related issues.  Before I loaded film into the camera this time I had to first figure out why the shutter release was returning very slowly after an exposure.  I first opened and cleaned the shutter to no effect.  Finally, I figured out there was a film of dust on a rod in the release linkage, and brushing on a little Ronsonal got the release moving freely again.