The Retina 1B

Although Eastman Kodak made their name as a supplier of photography to the masses with the famous Vest Pocket Kodaks, as time went on, the company diversified until it was the world's major producer of almost all forms of photographic supplies.

In the early 1930s, Eastman set out to diversify further by buying in the expertise of a major German camera manufacturer. The company that finally fell into the Kodak fold was Nagel Camerawerk of Stuttgart, a highly regarded manufacturer of 'miniature' (in other words rollfilm) cameras.

Nagel's new masters decided that what they really wanted was a thirty five millimetre camera that could compete in the new market that Leitz had created in the mid 'twenties with the Leica. It was obvious even in 1932, when Kodak bought Nagel, that 35mm was the wave of the future and Kodak were determined to be up there on the crest.

Ulterior Motives.

Kodak had a special reason for wanting a high quality camera with their name on it - the daylight loading cassette. From the introduction of the Leica, it had been taken for granted that photographers would load their film into proprietory cassettes that would be re-used once the film was processed. Kodak had realised that there was a good profit in selling darkroom reloads of 35mm film, but there could be a much bigger profit in selling a cassette already loaded with the stuff!

Thus was born the Kodak Retina. Unlike every other 35mm camera of the period, the Retina had no facility to take a reloadable cassette. Instead you bought a preloaded cassette, dropped it in the camera, rewound the film into it when finished and dropped the cassette into your local lab for processing. It was the same concept as the original 'Kodak' but now you kept the camera and just handed in the film.

The Retina evolved quickly to become a camera which, while not up with the top table players like the Leica and the Contax, was still thought of as a fundamentally dependable camera for the man (or woman) who wanted something with a litlle style and a modicum of cachet. One thing that was never in question about the Retina was its quality. Retinas always had excellent lenses mounted in first class shutters.

A Game of Three Halves

As time went on, three distinct lines of Retina were developed and by the mid 'fifties this evolution was complete.

At the top of the range were the series III cameras with a coupled rangefinder, built in meter and interchangeable lenses. Just below them in the hierarchy were the series II cameras which lacked the meter but were otherwise similarly specified and below them were the series I cameras which lacked the rangefinder and interchangeable lenses but could (and did) possess a built in meter.

The 1B model shown here is the last of the series I cameras and not to be confused with its predecessor the 1b (small 'b'). The 'big B' shows just how sophisticated the range had become by the end of the 'fifties. Introduced in 1957, the 1B was equipped with a marvelous bright line finder, an effective and reliable exposure meter and a very sharp Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar lens in a fully speeded Synchro-Compur shutter.

Small but Perfectly Formed

Although it suffers today in comparison with its more expensive, rangefinder equipped brethren, the 1B is a beutifully made and very compact camera capable of producing pictures fully as good as any other 35mm, albeit not so conveniently.

One or two of the Retina's features are really quite interesting. For example, the Retina does possess bellows, as did all the folding cameras of the period, but they are hidden by a metal shroud. Another interesting feature is the lever wind. When Kodak decided that their cameras ought to have lever winds, they also decided that Kodak customers would never want to do anything so crass as wind quickly, so they tucked the lever away on the base of the camera.

Yet another, very Kodak, feature is the film counter, which counts down and locks the camera when it reaches zero. Kodak made much of this feature, claiming it prevented the user from tearing the film off the feed reel. No doubt, the thought never even entered the Kodak designers' heads that it prevented the canny user from getting 37 or even 38 exposures on a film!

Loading Secrets

This last feature often catches new users out. When loading the camera, the exposure counter needs to be set to the blank area between 1 and 36. This can be achieved by pushing the chrome button at the back of the camera, next to the viewfinder, to the right and pressing the button beside the counter successively until the blank area shows. In fact, you can load the camera successfully with the counter anywhere in the region from 36 to, say, 10 and then repeat the procedure with the two buttons to set the counter to 36.

The 1B was equipped with the latest conveniences, including Exposure Value (or EV) settings on the meter and lens. To use the meter, you take your reading and turn the wheel on the top plate at the right until the needle is covered by the pointer. Assuming you've set your film speed correctly, the red pointer in the core of the knob will now point to a number from 2 to 18 that runs around the circumference. This is the EV.

At the bottom of the lens, there's a little pointer. Pulling this gently away from the lens allows you to set it to the matching EV on the lens barrel, where it drops into a detente. The shutter speed and aperture are now locked together and you can select whichever combination you prefer just by turning the shutter speed wheel.

It's a lot faster to use than describe and amazingly useful. Hasselblad lenses for the "C' series cameras have the same facility as do the later Rolleiflex TLRs. At the time of the 1B's introduction this was a very up-market facility and gives a good idea of where Kodak were placing their product.

As noted before, the Retina is, within its limitations, a very accomplished camera. The lens is certainly a match for all but the very finest of its day and, in general use, as good as any. The Retina's quirkiness is charming, rather than irritating, although the esoteric film counter takes some getting used to. The viewfinder and the surprisingly accurate meter make up for a lot though.

Given the low prices at which Retina 1Bs can be found, it's well worth looking out for one.

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