The Beast Arises!!!!

[Someonenameddavid]

I went to the Ultimate Photo Estate Sale... Really I only found out about it on day 2 so I missed the Leicas, but amongst the 25% off sales was.... A Kodak Ektra... of 1940 vintage... Non working; but when am I ever going to get one of these so I payed $xx and it became a shelf queen. Except I did a little camera fondling and got tue shutter to work at 1 second. So I am going to work it a couple of hundred times to warm up the lubricants and see if the higher speeds work.

It is, however, an engineering tour de force mixed ip in a disaster of a camera.
Lathe work and engraving gone wild:'interchangeable backs' as long as they are calibrated for the individual camera. The longest rangefinder base ( sorry Contax) an inordinately difficult and slow breech mount to interchange lenses. Zoom viewfinder . Left handed filmwinder which is a pain, literally and figuratively. Unreliable shutter. A polished chrome oversized pressure plate which must have reflected every specular highlight. It seems hard to think how much money they spent to make it so bad. They must have thought Leitz had the patent on sexy cameras and Zeiss had the patent on boxy manly cameras, so Kodak makes an unsexy bitsy camera that is inherently unreliable.... But I like it.

I had thought about taking it into the camera repair store and asking innocently: "do you repair Kodak cameras?" then whipping this out just for the reaction.

David

 

[John Austin]

And a friend thought I was strange when I finally overcame the Leica myth and returned to my fleet reliable and easy to use black Nikon Fs

I am glad you have got it, as if I had seen it I would have bought it because I felt sorry for it and then condemned myself for becoming a camera collector

Now go and find this little lot,

I stole the image from Pacific Rim Camera, to whom I apologise - PRC is a great source of historical information

 

[Someonenameddavid]

Oh there were a half dozen Contax II and iii and a couple of super Ikontas and a Foton and a Tenax II so I bought the Foton, Tenax II, a Contax IIIa with the modern biogon the Super Ikonta Bs and the Ektra, if I find a buyer for the Foton I, as they say in Blighty, will be quids in.

 

[Bill Burk]

The Kodak Ektra is the camera I wanted, I hear there's a repairman capable of fully restoring it. You should do that.

I settled for the Kodak 35. CLA'd it myself. Shutter works at all speeds (doesn't have that many speeds to go wrong).

 

[Someonenameddavid]

It is about $600 for a restoration. I suppose it should be done for the sake of history. And like the Flying Dutchman I shall be doomed to forever wander garage sales looking for Ektra accessories. However I have had 3 "once in a lifetime" yard sales.

David

 

[Someonenameddavid]

It is about $600 for a restoration. I suppose it should be done for the sake of history. And like the Flying Dutchman I shall be doomed to forever wander garage sales looking for Ektra accessories. However I have had 3 "once in a lifetime" yard sales.

David

So I worked with it a while and lo and behold, the shutter speeds now work and I got the advance mechanism to work. The rangefinder seems to be accurate so I slapped a roll of cheap CN in it and we shall see what develops....

It weighs about the same as a Nikon F2.....
now I'm cruising for accessories.

David