End of one Retina era: Chris Sherlock retires

albada · Jul 11, 2022

paulbarden said:
...I really dislike how they're engineered...

No kidding!
I have no problem repairing Retina rangefinders, and I even put some tips on my website on workarounds for the poor rack-design of the IIIc/IIc. But the Retina Reflex, although well made, is a nightmare of over-complexity. It appears to have been designed by Rube Goldberg. The Japanese are good at simplifying, but the Retina Reflexes appear to be the first design somebody thought of that would work, with no subsequent effort at simplification. I regard them as a source of parts for rangefinders.

Mark Overton

jprofita · Jul 27, 2023

This seems like the appropriate place to ask this...I think I know the answer. I was given Retina Reflex Instamatic with 3 lenses. Does it make sense to purchase a regular Retina Reflex 3 or 4 to make use of the what appear to be very nice lenses? Thanks

markjwyatt · Jul 27, 2023

jprofita said:
This seems like the appropriate place to ask this...I think I know the answer. I was given Retina Reflex Instamatic with 3 lenses. Does it make sense to purchase a regular Retina Reflex 3 or 4 to make use of the what appear to be very nice lenses? Thanks

I inherited a couple of Schneider-Kreuznach lenses without a rangefinder cam and not labelled "Retina-...", so I suspect they are Instamatic lenses. I bought a Reflex IV and use the lenses (I had the 50mm f1.9 Xenon and 35mm f2.8 Curtagon, and have added a few more Retina lenses). I would say definitely yes, it is worthwhile. I can also adapt them to M42 and FujiX.

retina_restoration · Jul 27, 2023

jprofita said:
This seems like the appropriate place to ask this...I think I know the answer. I was given Retina Reflex Instamatic with 3 lenses. Does it make sense to purchase a regular Retina Reflex 3 or 4 to make use of the what appear to be very nice lenses? Thanks

The Retina-Xenon (and Curtagon and Tele-Arton, etc) lenses are excellent and well worth using. The Reflex III is a good camera to pair these lenses with, but finding a working copy can be difficult; most need servicing to be 100% functional, and there's nobody left who is willing to work on them, now that Chris has retired.

markjwyatt · Jul 27, 2023

retina_restoration said:
The Retina-Xenon (and Curtagon and Tele-Arton, etc) lenses are excellent and well worth using. The Reflex III is a good camera to pair these lenses with, but finding a working copy can be difficult; most need servicing to be 100% functional, and there's nobody left who is willing to work on them, now that Chris has retired.

You might try Ross Yerkes. He worked for Kodak (repair) and knows the Retinas well. He did a simple fix on my Retina Reflex IV a few years ago.

BobD · Jul 28, 2023

Chris is posting repair videos on YouTube again.

AZSkip · Aug 6, 2023

Mr. Sherlock’s tutorials and videos on the Retina IIa have been wonderful in helping me clean the viewfinder/rangefinder on my IIa. It’s very good of him to share his knowledge.

End of one Retina era: Chris Sherlock retires

albada

jprofita

markjwyatt

retina_restoration

markjwyatt

BobD

AZSkip

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