Kodak Retina IIa

A new toy.











Canon Rebel XT
Canon 35-128mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens
ambiate lit
-overhead tungsten

My uncle made a decent Goodwill find of this antique rangefinder camera. He bought it, took it apart, cleaned it up, put it back together, and tried to sale it on ebay, but couldn't get the $50 he asked for. So, he gave it to me.

It's a German-built Kodak, a 35mm folding rangefinder camera with a Schneider Xenon 50mm f/2 lens and 1/500s-max leaf shutter.

It was produced between 1951 and 1954 and sold for about $170 (about $1100 today). It competed with other German and Japanese rangefinders as a simpler, more user friendly alternative.

At some point between ending up at Goodwill and being disassembled by my uncle, it lost its original cold-shoe (but still has a working X-sync socked), lost the original lens aperture lever (requiring a small tool/pointy object to change the f/stop), and when opened the lens sits less than parallel with the body (probably causing some scheimpflug-ish focusing issues).

But it still functions well (except for a little sticking in the 1s and 1/2s shutter speeds). It doesn't appear to have any light leaks or lens defects, and also came with its original Kodak FVII/32 UV filter (also made in Germany).

I ran a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 through it, but won't be able to process it for a week or two.

more info about the Retina IIa can be found here