Recommend a Kodak 35mm Camera

[Helge]

I find both auxiliaries easy to use with the dual finder. Transferring the focus takes a few seconds, but it's actually pretty easy when you get used to it. I mostly zone focus with the 35 anyway. Beautifully finished cameras that are a joy to use.

Andy

But at f4, it’s about the slowest prime 35mm I’ve ever seen. There is even a 5.6 version. X-S
And then you have to find 60mm filters if they didn’t come with any, or coloured 60mm filters if you’d ever want to filter B&W with coloured filters.

 

[Paul Howell]

I have a IIIC big, got as a graduation gift in 1966, came with both axillary lens, not only are they slow, but heavy, and the rangefinder does not couple to the lens, you have focus, find the distance on the lower part of the lens that is part of the camera body then transfer to the axillary lens. If you want interchangeable lens I recommend a Retina S.

 

[Helge]

One nice thing about the interchangeable lenses is that the removable front element, is that it makes it possible to get into the front cell and clean it (and I think also the shutter AFAIR?) without risk of losing calibration and alignment.

 

[AndyH]

But at f4, it’s about the slowest prime 35mm I’ve ever seen. There is even a 5.6 version. X-S
And then you have to find 60mm filters if they didn’t come with any, or coloured 60mm filters if you’d ever want to filter B&W with coloured filters.

While f4 seems quite slow by today's standards, f3.5 was pretty normal for rangefinder era lenses in this focal length. I don't really find it much of a handicap in use, as I generally shoot this lens stopped down a bit anyway. I do a lot of my filtering in PP when doing B/w conversions, and have had no problem finding a polarizer, and several other BW filters. I think it's one of the last remaining bargains in 35mm rangefinders of the era. Compact, and a real pleasure to use. I have a LOT of cameras and this is one of my absolute favorites.

Andy

 

[BrianShaw]

I was just out shooting with an 80 Longar. It’s overcast so EV13. Even with 125 Plus-X there’s no need for smaller than f/4 because there’s not a fast enough shutter speed.

The Longar and Curtar really only good outdoors or inside with flash...

 

[BrianShaw]

...

if they didn’t come with any, or coloured 60mm filters if you’d ever want to filter B&W with coloured filters.

if you don’t already know... that’s Kodak 60mm, the outside diameter of the filter holder... not thread diameter like everyone else measures. I think a 58mm filter will fit it, or so I’ve read, but don’t have one to verify. Kodak only made a yellow and skylight filter in “60” for the Longar and f/4 Curtar. Weird but true.

 

[Helge]

While f4 seems quite slow by today's standards, f3.5 was pretty normal for rangefinder era lenses in this focal length. I don't really find it much of a handicap in use, as I generally shoot this lens stopped down a bit anyway. I do a lot of my filtering in PP when doing B/w conversions, and have had no problem finding a polarizer, and several other BW filters. I think it's one of the last remaining bargains in 35mm rangefinders of the era. Compact, and a real pleasure to use. I have a LOT of cameras and this is one of my absolute favorites.

Andy

Look it’s certainly not useless and it’s fun to play around with. But I’d take a second 35mm lens equipped camera any day.
Just the very fact that you have to unmount the lens to collapse the camera tells you something about the ambitions of the designer.
It was an afterthought, later cameras would do better.
The IIIc is perhaps the ultimate fixed lens 135 folder in a long and proud line, where during last stages of the design work, the designer noticed that SLRs, Leicas and Contaxes sold rather well, and got anxious.
The real Retina RF with interchangeable lenses came out just a year later and made a mockery of the IIIc aux lenses.
The mighty Retina IIIS.

(image from Cameraquest)
This is how you do changeable lenses on a rangefinder.
It clearly shows just how slow and cumbersome the IIIc lenses where.
In many ways the IIIS is more advanced than the Leica M3.

For example:
Automatic viewfinder adjustment for different focal lengths.
No goggles needed for 35mm.
Due to leaf shutter, flash sync to 500.
Build in light meter.
Sane film loading.

 

[Pioneer]

Now all I have to do is find a working example of one of these cameras. I doubt that I will use interchangeable lenses, I already have a well equipped Contaflex Super B with a similar lens setup.

I'm still waiting for a response from Chris, I hope everything is going well for him on his side of the world.

Anyway, this has been a very informative thread already. Thanks for all the help everyone has provided already and feel free to keep the suggestions coming.

 

[BrianShaw]

Chris seems fine. He’s still posting YouTube videos, as recently as last week. There are many good and affordable on eBay. Buy a decent one at good price (not difficult) and have Chris overhaul it. You’ll be set for a long time!

 

[AndyH]

The IIIc is perhaps the ultimate fixed lens 135 folder in a long and proud line, where during last stages of design the designer, noticed that SLRs, Leicas and Contaxes sold rather well, and got anxious.

I have a IIIc Retina, as well as a Leica III with 35, 50, 89, and 135 lenses. If I'm shooting a normal lens, I often pick up the Retina, but if I'm wandering about in the street with a 35mm, I'll generally pick up the Leica. My 35 is a Russian Jupiter f2.8 in Leica mount, because I can't afford Leitz glass in the shorter focal lengths. It's a pretty sharp lens, although I had to buy two to get a good specimen. The two combined were still only about a third of the price of the Summaron. I'm not wild about the Hektor 135, which is uncoated, but I love the Elmar 90, which is my second favorite lens.

Andy

 

[AndyH]

Chris seems fine. He’s still posting YouTube videos, as recently as last week. There are many good and affordable on eBay. Buy a decent one at good price (not difficult) and have Chris overhaul it. You’ll be set for a long time!

Plus One on this advice! If you're primarily interested in the 0mm lens, either a IIc or IIIc model would be a fine choice, and they are still somewhat affordable to most of us. I love carrying mine around in my jacket pocket. I don't think you'll regret that choice. Chris posted a new video today on his Ambi Silette project, so he seems to be doing well.

Andy

 

[nosmok]

Just chiming in, not necessarily usefully, to say that the best images I've ever shot on 35mm film are with the Lumenized Kodak Anastigmat Special 48mm f/4.5 lens on my 828-shooting Kodak Bantam. These cameras are plentiful, cheap, rugged, compact, elegant, and a huge pain in the ass because of the 828 film aspect. But I keep coming back to it.

 

[MattKing]

If you are going to permit 828 cameras, the Bantam RF was the source of the majority of my Dad's best Kodachrome slides:

 

[Donald Qualls]

If you are going to permit 828 cameras, the Bantam RF was the source of the majority of my Dad's best Kodachrome slides:

I've got one of those. Unlike most 828 cameras, it uses a friction roller to stop the advance and doesn't depend on a feeler to set the shutter -- which means it will work with either standard perfed 35 mm film or unperfed -- as in, cut from 120 (to get long backing) or long-roll from school photo cameras (got a roll of Vericolor in my freezer in this format, and a bunch of long-expired 828 Kodacolor to use for backing and spools).

 

[Hunter_Compton]

I've got one of those. Unlike most 828 cameras, it uses a friction roller to stop the advance and doesn't depend on a feeler to set the shutter.

None of the Kodak 828 cameras have a feeler which sets the shutter. The shutters are everset on on the cheaper pre-war Bantams and cocked manually on the Bantam f/4.5, Bantam Special, Bantam RF and the Pony 828 cameras.

 

[AndyH]

Look it’s certainly not useless and it’s fun to play around with. But I’d take a second 35mm lens equipped camera any day.
Just the very fact that you have to unmount the lens to collapse the camera tells you something about the ambitions of the designer.
It was an afterthought, later cameras would do better.
The IIIc is perhaps the ultimate fixed lens 135 folder in a long and proud line, where during last stages of the design work, the designer noticed that SLRs, Leicas and Contaxes sold rather well, and got anxious.
The real Retina RF with interchangeable lenses came out just a year later and made a mockery of the IIIc aux lenses.
The mighty Retina IIIS. View attachment 244355
(image from Cameraquest)
This is how you do changeable lenses on a rangefinder.
It clearly shows just how slow and cumbersome the IIIc lenses where.
In many ways the IIIS is more advanced than the Leica M3.

For example:
Automatic viewfinder adjustment for different focal lengths.
No goggles needed for 35mm.
Due to leaf shutter, flash sync to 500.
Build in light meter.
Sane film loading.

That's all true. Sadly, a full outfit is already out of my budget right now, especially while I'm completing my Pentax kit and starting to reassemble my Nikon F gear.

Andy

 

[Donald Qualls]

None of the Kodak 828 cameras have a feeler which sets the shutter. The shutters are everset on on the cheaper pre-war Bantams and cocked manually on the Bantam f/4.5, Bantam Special, Bantam RF and the Pony 828 cameras.

Then why would Kodak have gone to the trouble to put a single perf per frame in the 828 film -- a feature that was later used in 126 and 110 cameras, including most of the ones from Kodak, most of which surely did use the feeler? At least in 126, if your camera didn't use the feeler to stop the advance, you'd wind up overlapping the pre-exposed frame borders (certainly present in Kodak 126 films, not in 110, as far as I know, and not in 828 because at least some 828 cameras didn't use the feeler -- including a couple that shot a frame other than 28x40).

Edit: look at the back photo of this Bantam from its eBay listing: you can see the feeler pin in the upper left of the film gate.

 

[Hunter_Compton]

The 828 format was designed to be a lower cost alternative to 35mm film in terms of the camera required. The perforations in the film are used, it's just not related to shutter function. The perforations are used for a cheap, simple film advance/spacing automatic stop. When the feeler pin drops into the perforation, it locks the film advance knob. When you want to advance the film again, you push a small silver button on the back of the camera and it unlocks the film advance knob until the next perforation is reached.

The Bantam RF is a slight exception to this rule, the film advance is coupled to the shutter release so that you don't have to also press a secondary button to advance the film, however, advancing the film in this camera does not cock the shutter. The Bantam RF uses a Flash 300 shutter which still has to be cocked externally and manually.

None of this prevents you from using regular perforated 35mm film or unperforated film. Its just when advancing you need to constantly hold down the release button, or if you're using unperforated film, you just ignore it.

126 and 110 cameras do use the perforation on their film to cock the shutter, acting as a double exposure prevention mechanism. However, this is not the purpose in most 828 cameras. Just because something has similar characteristics, do not assume that the purpose is exactly the same.

 

[Pioneer]

Well, thanks to Jim Galli I now have a Retina iiiC on the way. I don't know a whole lot about it yet but it should arrive any day so I am sure I will have plenty of fun learning how best to use it.

 

[abruzzi]

the one thing to remember is the film counter counts down, and if the film doesn't advance, its almost certainly because the counter is down to zero, not because something is broken. I know this, and it still catches me occasionally.

 

[mshchem]

I just dug out my Retina IIc. I got it from a friend who closed his shop. Beautiful condition, the shutter has been serviced recently. Nice clear rangefinder. These were pretty darn nice cameras in the 50's. I never use it, I should, no easier camera to carry.

 

[btaylor]

Yikes, this discussion gave me GAS. Found a nice Retina IIIc on the ‘bay- it looks like it has had a couple of rolls through it it’s whole life. It’s just a beautiful piece of precision machinery. I knew a grown up when I was a kid that had one, I always found it fascinating- so compact with its nifty folding mechanism. The fit and finish is amazing- hard to believe it was only 1/3 the price of a Leica when it was new, but it wasn’t a “professional” camera. My first capable camera after my Instamatic (awfully fuzzy pictures) was a used Olympus Pen S, I think I paid $30 for it. Something like this Retina would have been completely out of my league- M Leicas or Nikon RF‘s impossible dreams.

 

[MattKing]

When I was growing up in the 1960s, my father really wanted a Retina IIIc. He was the customer Service department manager at a Kodak Canada Kodachrome lab that had a repair department run by a Retina repair specialist and had access to everything that would make that possible except for one inconvenient fact - he had a young family and a wife who wasn't employed outside the home - it just didn't make sense for him to spend the money!
By the time he could reasonably afford it, the Retinas had been out of production for more than a decade, but he never really stopped wanting them.
Move forward 25 years, when film cameras were going for much less due to the advent of digital, I realized that I could obtain a reasonably priced IIIc on eBay. So I bought one, and gave it to him.
Dad didn't get a lot of years of use out of it - he was already in his 80s when I gave it to him - but he enjoyed it for as long as his eyesight permitted.
He gave it back to me a few years later, because he knew I would put it to good use.
He is gone now, but I certainly think of him whenever I use it.
Here is one result from it - it has served me well in 11 x 14 size a couple of shows:

 

[btaylor]

When I was growing up in the 1960s, my father really wanted a Retina IIIc. He was the customer Service department manager at a Kodak Canada Kodachrome lab that had a repair department run by a Retina repair specialist and had access to everything that would make that possible except for one inconvenient fact - he had a young family and a wife who wasn't employed outside the home - it just didn't make sense for him to spend the money!
By the time he could reasonably afford it, the Retinas had been out of production for more than a decade, but he never really stopped wanting them.
Move forward 25 years, when film cameras were going for much less due to the advent of digital, I realized that I could obtain a reasonably priced IIIc on eBay. So I bought one, and gave it to him.
Dad didn't get a lot of years of use out of it - he was already in his 80s when I gave it to him - but he enjoyed it for as long as his eyesight permitted.
He gave it back to me a few years later, because he knew I would put it to good use.
He is gone now, but I certainly think of him whenever I use it.
Here is one result from it - it has served me well in 11 x 14 size a couple of shows:
View attachment 245225

That’s a beautiful story, Matt. Funny how we are, something we wanted when we were younger often never loses its luster- it is perhaps even more satisfying to realize it later in life. Your dad must have really enjoyed it! Wonderful photo too- I’m hoping to shoot with mine today.

 

[AndyH]

That’s a beautiful story, Matt. Funny how we are, something we wanted when we were younger often never loses its luster- it is perhaps even more satisfying to realize it later in life. Your dad must have really enjoyed it! Wonderful photo too- I’m hoping to shoot with mine today.

That really is very touching. I was fortunate to be able to fulfill a couple of non-photographic dreams for my dad, just wish there'd been more time.

I've managed to fulfill many of my "dream camera" dreams the past few years, and I still have a few more to acquire, without disrupting the family budget too much. Hasselblad outfit, Super Ikontas, Rolleis, a full Spotmatic kit, and well on the way to a full Nikon F outfit. You're never too old to have a happy childhood.

Andy