Retina Renaissance

        In 1948 I was thirteen and in junior high school in New York City when the photography bug bit me. I can remember walking to school and peering into the windows of the many pawn shops that lined Third Avenue between 96th and 86th Street at the time. What a wonderland! There you could discover musical instruments, radios, jewelry, toasters, and just about anything you could think of for sale. And especially cameras.
     

Retinette II from My Current Collection

    One day as I pressed my nose against one of the pawn shop windows, I saw what was to be my first camera. Of course, I didn't know anything about cameras, but I did know that the one I was lusting after in the  window was meant for me.
     For the next few months I saved every penny I could earn as a grocery store delivery boy until I finally had enough money to buy my new treasure, a Kodak Retinette II which I now know was manufactured in 1939.
      I read everything I could about photography for the next five years while I practiced my newfound skills with my little Retinette. Zone focus by rotating the lens. Set the aperture and the shutter speed using the Sunny Sixteen rule. Cock the shutter. Peek through the viewfinder and release the shutter. How much more basic could you get?
      In 1953 I entered the Army and found myself serving overseas with the 7th Division in Korea. That's when I lost track of my beloved little Retinette and all the photos I had created with it. At the time, I didn't think much of it, but now I realize it was a disaster.

        Since then, I've owned Leicas, Canons, Voigtlanders, Agfas, Konicas, Nikons, Minoltas, Niccas, Ricohs, Yashicas, and dozens of other cameras. But of all the cameras I've owned, I have to admit that the Retina is the one that's closest to my heart.
        Currently in my collection I have a Retinette Model 020;  Retinette 1a;  Retinette II (shown above); Retina 1 Type 117;  Retina 1 Type 148; Retina 1a;  Retina 1b;  Retina II; Retina IIa; Retina IIc; Retina Auto III; and Retina IIIc. Which of these cameras is my favorite? Of course, I'll always have a warm spot in my heart for the Retinette II. But my hands down, all-time favorite is the Retina IIa.
      
     

      For one thing, the IIa doesn't have the tacky EV system you find on the IIc and IIIc. And it doesn't have the IIIc's exposure meter. Nor does it have the film advance lever on the bottom of the camera.
       But it does have an advance lever mounted on top; an excellent 2.0/50 Xenon lens; a nice, bright viewfinder/rangefinder system; shutter speeds of 1-500 +B; and easily accessed controls.
        As you can see, there's nothing fancy about this Retina. Not for everybody, it's perfect for the minimalist who shoots primarily in black and white and doesn't require the refinements offered by many other cameras.

         If I were to make a second choice, however, it would be the Retina IIc. Although it does have the much maligned EV system and a bottom mounted film advance lever, it seems to be noticeably sturdier than the IIa. On this model, there's a shutter rack system that's more reliable than that of earlier models. And the bellows is no longer exposed. The IIc features, also, a new door latch system. As is true with other Retinas, the shutter is whisper quiet: perfect for street photography.

         The IIc in my collection sports a 2.8/50mm Xenon C lens that can be removed and replaced by either an accessory 80mm or 35mm lens. Being a charter member of the Hopelessly Addicted Retina Collectors Club, I've ordered the 80mm lens and a 30mm/80/mm Multiple Viewfinder just to try out for fun.
     You've probably noticed that I haven't commented on flash synchronization, hot shoes, or the like. That's because I used flash only when I photographed weddings back in the days when the Beatles drove teenage girls crazy and Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday to President John F. Kennedy.

Retina IIc, Kentmere ISO 100 film

       I'm not planning to discuss any of the other Retinas in my collection at this time, but if you would like me to do so, please post a comment and I'll respond.

       On another topic, I used to use lighter fluid (naptha) to free up lazy shutters and to loosen frozen helical mounts. But then I discovered CRC QD ELECTRONIC CLEANER. Designed to clean and protect electronic equipment, this product does a much better job than the lighter fluid does. If you use it, be sure to read the warning on the back of the aerosol can.
        

     

A Gallery of Photos

    Here's a gallery of photos I created using some of the vintage cameras in my collection. I used Arista.Edu 100 film developed in D-76. I printed the images on an RC paper before I scanned them into my computer.

 

      I'll post more photos in future installments of this blog.

The Diminutive Zeiss Ikon Ikonta

      At just about five inches wide, the Zeiss Ikon Ikonta is small enough to fit into the palm of your hand. What's more, at just a wee bit over a pound, it's light enough to carry around all day without breaking your back. And because it's a folder, you can even slip it into your pocket when you're not using it.

     As is true with other Zeiss cameras, the fit and finish on this little jewel are superb, and so are the mechanics. You can barely hear the shutter click when you release it. The focusing mechanism is as smooth as butter, as is the aperture adjusting ring which has no click stops.
     The front cover drops down and clicks into place securely. The film advance and rewind knobs operate smoothly. The back swings open for easy loading, and the shutter release (photo, ten o'clock ) is nicely placed.
      The Ikonta features, also, a self timer, as well as flash synchronization with an old style connector that wouldn't be a problem for me because I never use a flash unit. Another plus is that, unlike many other vintage cameras I've seen, this one has strap lugs.
   

     That said, I have to admit that the Ikonta isn't a camera everyone would fall in love with. The lens, for example, is a 3.5/45mm Novar Anastigmat, which is not exactly the gold standard among lenses. And the camera's top shutter speed is an uninspiring 1/300 second.
     Because the camera has no rangefinder, you must estimate distances when you focus on a scene. Fortunately, however, the 45mm lens offers excellent depth of field. Finally, you must cock the shutter manually either before or after you wind the film forward.

      It takes fairly nimble fingers to operate this camera. Notice how crowded the controls are. But there are advantages. At least the shutter release at the right in the photo (left) is substantial in size, and the focusing ring that encircles the lens is easily accessible and moves smoothly.     


        Interestingly,  the oversized  film advance and rewind knobs are at the bottom of the camera. To rewind the film, you push in the button on the advance knob to disengage the take up spool. Then you must reset the film counter manually. At the left in the photo you can see the tab that you push down to operate the sliding lever that opens the camera's back. Note the simple, uncluttered design.
              
        Seen from above are a very basic film type indicator dial on the left topped by a screw that supports the camera's film take up spool.
         On the right is another unit that seems to be merely decorative. I think the camera's designers added this disc to help achieve a sense of balance.
         Obviously, if speed, convenience, and automatic gizmos  are your middle name, the Zeiss Ikon Ikonta isn't the camera for you. But if, like me, you enjoy the challenge and sense of satisfaction offered by this historic image producer, then you'll probably enjoy using it 

Weston Master II Model 735

       For about thirty years during the last century, exposure meters manufactured by the Weston Electric Instrument Corporation were the first choice of both amateur and professional photographers here in the United States. Unfortunately, because Weston was unable to survive the arrival of more modern battery powered meters, the company went out of business some time during the 1970s.
       But if you're a Weston lover like me, you can take heart in the fact that many of these beautifully crafted, selenium powered units are available on the Internet and elsewhere. The trick is to find one that hasn't been abused and still measures light reliably.

      I was lucky when I found not one, but two of these wonderful instruments at an auction site. After I received them, the first thing I did was to test them for accuracy.
      I did this by pointing them at a clear north sky between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM. Imagine my surprise when I found that the needles on both units pointed to the number 320 at the exact centers of the two dials. This proved that the units were accurate. Surely, I thought, the Goddess of Light must have been smiling at me.
    

     The photo at the left shows the reverse side of the units with their light baffles closed. These baffles remain closed while you aim them at a scene to take a light reading of a bright or normal scene.
    But when you're reading a poorly lighted scene, you flip the baffles down. When you do so, the number on the dials will auto-
matically change to reveal a new set of values for poorly lighted scenes. With the light baffles down you can see the honeycombed light gathering surface that covers the selenium photovoltaic cell.

       The photo on the left shows the numbers that appear when you're reading a normal or bright scene with the baffles closed.
        On the right you will see the numbers that appear automatically when the baffles are lowered for low light readings. Note that although the Weston meter was designed primarily for use in bright or normal lighting situations, it can still be effective in low light situations. 

         The dial on the Weston II (and other Weston meters) is actually a kind of mechanical computer. To set the speed of the film you're using, press the button near the red dot I placed there for illustration and, using the tab near the yellow dot, turn the silver colored dial until the number you've selected appears in a little window next to the word SPEED. Note that the numbers (.3-800) are Weston numbers that you must convert to ASA/ISO numbers. Fortunately, conversion charts are readily available on the Internet.
         Then you use the tabs next to the blue dots to align the arrow with the number that corresponds to the number shown on the dial after you aim the unit at the scene you're photographing.

        In the example shown here, with the film speed set at Weston 80 (ASA/ISO 100) and the red needle pointing to 13 (or close to it), the white arrow is set to 13.
        The black numbers on the silver dial show all the possible shutter speeds when they are matched to the white numbers that face them on the black dial.
         For example, ideally in this example you could use f5.6/40, f8/20, or any other combination shown on the dial. Obviously, you'll have to make some small adjustments to conform to the settings on your camera.
        Notice that on the left side of the arrow "A 1/2" appears while "C 2X" appears on the right of the arrow. The first setting would give you 1/2 the indicated exposure. The second setting would give you 2X the indicated exposure. These settings are useful for either flat scenes or scenes with excessive contrast.
      In the illustration you will see a "U" opposite .8 and an "O" opposite 100. You can use these settings as follows. For a scene that has a wide range of tones, first set the arrow to the light value of the darkest area in the scene. Then set the arrow to the light value indicated for the brightest area. Finally, set the arrow midway between the darkest and lightest values indicated by the meter and make your exposure based on the midway reading.

    

       I was lucky enough to find meters that came with covers for both units. Although they add a bit of bulk to the meters, they are necessary if you want to keep your units in top condition. And as if that weren't enough, I even scored an instruction manual and a box for one of the units.
       But I wasn't lucky enough to find a Weston Invercone, which is a device you can attach to the meter that allows you to take incident light readings as well as reflected light readings. Worse yet, Invercones are at least as scarce as winning lottery tickets. If you have one you no longer use, I'd love to hear from you.

Neoca 35-K

      Whoever heard of the Neoca camera? I remember Nyoka from the Saturday film series Perils of Nyoka  starring Kay Aldridge back in 1942 when I was seven years old and it cost a dime to get into the theater. Later, Nyoka lived on in comic books until 1962. She was quite a gal, that Nyoka. A real fighter! Boy, was she fearless and strong back in those days!

      Neoca? Well, I did a little research and discovered that the folks at Neoca in Japan manufactured a dozen or so cameras during the 1950s until they declared bankruptcy in 1960. I saw a Neoca SV SLR listed at $379 on an auction site, as well as a Neoca 2S at $100. Other than that, I found very little information about Neoca and practically nothing about the Neoca 35-K. I do know, however, that I paid $35 for my Neoka 35-K.

      Although this little camera won't win any prizes for build quality or finish, it still has a lot going for it. For one thing, because it's just 4 1/2-inches wide and can fit into the palm of your hand, it's a perfect little stealth camera. Nobody who sees you walking along carrying what looks like a toy camera would give you a second glance. What's more, it has a whisper quiet leaf shutter that's almost inaudible.
      And then there's its 3.5/45mm fixed lens. If you set the distance at eight feet and the aperture at f11, everything from about five feet to almost twenty-five feet would be acceptably sharp. That said, who needs a rangefinder for street photography?   
     The Neoca 35-K has just five shutter speeds: 25, 50, 100, 300, B. But that's not a problem unless you need to use the faster or slower speeds found on many other cameras.
      The back of the camera slides off for easy film loading, and the spring-loaded rewind lever pops up when it's time to rewind the film...a nice touch! The viewfinder is crystal clear and shows parallax markings. The film counter does not automatically reset itself.

       If you don't plan to challenge the work of such famous "street photographers" as Henri Cartier Bresson, Walker Evans, or Lee Friedlander, and if you'd be happy with a very basic camera that costs just a few bucks, you'd probably enjoy using a Neoca 35-K along with a supply of black and white film.
      Just make sure you keep the rather tacky lens cap in your pocket where no one will see it.

   

COMING SOON: RICOH 300

      

The Yashica YK

       Quite a few of the two dozen or so fixed lens RF cameras in my collection arrived with extremely stiff focusing mechanisms. That's why I was happy when the Yashica YK I bought at an auction site for $15 was free of that defect. Of course, for just fifteen bucks I didn't expect the camera to be anything worth crowing about. But I was wrong. As a matter of fact, in terms of build quality and ergonomics, the Yashica YK easily stands up to its upscale and more expensive cousin the Yashica 35(see this blog, 2/15/19).
        Both cameras, for example, are fitted out with 2.8/45mm Yashinon lenses. Both have lever film advances; swing out back doors for easy film loading; and robust bodies that look and feel like they can survive rough handling.
        There are differences, of course. While the more expensive 35 offers a full range of shutter speeds, the YK offers only 25-300 +B. What's more, because the viewfinder and rangefinder windows on the 35 are set farther apart than those on the YK, the rangefinder on the 35 is the more accurate of the two.  Finally, the 35 offers a Copal MXV shutter with self-timer, while the YK features only a Copal shutter. Because the remaining differences between the two cameras are what I call "bells and whistles" designed more or less for convenience, I won't discuss them here. 
                                                

Yashica YK

        Given the differences between the two cameras and your needs and style as a photographer (as well as your budget), which of the two cameras would you select? As far as I'm concerned, either camera would serve me well, but I would probably choose the YK.  Here's why.
        The limited range of shutter speeds and lack of self timer on the YK wouldn't be a problem for me. During all the years I was active in street photography (and there are many of them), I'm pretty sure I didn't use shutter speeds slower than 1/30 or faster than 1/250 more than a few dozen times. And I was usually working at f8-f16. I don't remember ever shooting wide open. Finally, as far as focusing is concerned, I would set the distance at ten or twelve feet and rely on depth of field. Most of the time I hit the mark or was pretty close to it. I usually used Kodak Plus X (ASA 125) film or Ilford (ASA 100) in daylight. Ninety-nine percent of my photos were in black and white.
         Well there you have it: the confession of an octogenarian whose been left so far behind the digital revolution that he's not able to tell a pixel from a potato. And happily so. But that doesn't make me a Luddite. I have to admit that I was among the first to own a Leica M-9 when that camera appeared a few years ago. Using it was fun for a while. But I sold it when I began to miss the magical appearance of images in a tray of Kodak D-76 developer.

COMING SOON:The Neoca 35-k
                                               

      

Incredible Images from World War II

        I was in junior high school in New York City in 1949 when I got my first camera, a Kodak box camera. A few months later, I bought a Kodak Retina. That camera marked the beginning of my love affair with rangefinder cameras.  In the years that followed I owned and used five different Leicas, two or three Voigtlanders, a few Canons, a Mamiya C330, a Crown Graphic, a Rollei 35, a Polaroid, and many others, the names of which I can't remember.
       I used those cameras over a period of more than sixty-five years in many different locations and conditions. But none of my experiences came close to those experienced by a young Australian soldier who became a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II.
        In 1940 when he was still underage, George Aspinall joined the Australian Army and was posted to Singapore in 1941. As a going away present his uncle gave him a Kodak 2 folding Brownie. The camera had a 6.2 lens and captured eight 3 1/2 X 2 1/2 exposures on 620 film.

George Aspinall , circa 1980s

        On February 15, 1942 when he was just nineteen, Japanese forces accepted the surrender of British and Australian forces in Malaya, and Aspinall became a prisoner of war at the age of nineteen.  
        Determined to record the abysmal conditions in which he and his fellow prisoners were forced to live, and even though he would have been executed if the Japanese had caught him, the young soldier managed to hide his camera from his captors and capture and process what has been called "the most comprehensive photographic record obtained by an Australian prisoner of war of the Japanese." At the end of the war, many of these images were used as evidence at the War Crimes trials that followed.
        Aspinall's story is truly amazing, especially when you consider that he captured his images using Xray film he cut to size for his camera and then even managed to process the negatives in what can only be called impossible conditions. And that's putting it mildly. Remember that he was using a Kodak 2. How much more basic can you get? A pinhole camera, maybe.
        I hadn't known about Aspinall until I stumbled onto a book titled Changi Photographer: George Aspinall's Record of Captivity by Tim Bowden. Published in Australia, the book isn't readily available here in the States, but you can find it on the Internet if you're interested in seeing a series of extraordinary photographs that were taken under extraordinarily difficult conditions.

        Closer to home, Michaelantonio (Tony) Vaccaro was drafted into the U.S. Army early during World War Two when he was just twenty-one. Assigned to the 83rd Division, he served as a combat

Tony Vaccaro, circa 1940s

infantryman in Europe for nine months. But that's not all. At the same time he was in action as an infantryman, Vaccaro captured approximately 8,000 images of the war. And to make the young soldier's story even more interesting and incredible, the camera he used was an Argus C3.
      If you've served as an infantryman in a combat zone, you can appreciate the significance of Vaccaro's achievement, especially when you realize that very often he had to develop his negatives in an infantryman's steel helmet!
       Affectionately called "The Brick," the Argus C3 has also been called "The Model T of Cameras." Although it had just five shutter speeds and a 3.5/50 lens, it was sturdy and dependable. You can still find working units for sale for just a few dollars.
        After the war Tony Vaccaro enjoyed a long career as a commercial photographer and teacher. Interestingly, he kept his war photos out of the public eye until the 1990s when they were first shown in Europe. Later, he was the recipient of many awards. You can discover more information about this extraordinary infantryman/photographer on the Internet.
     
        After I read about Tony Vaccaro and his incredible achievements, I regretted having sold the Argus C3 Matchmatic I once had in my collection. It would have been interesting to have seen what kind of results I could have achieved with it.

COMING SOON: The Yashica YK