How nice to watch a channel about photography, that is not an advertising channel for the latest 100MP offerings from Fuji, Sony, Canon or even Nikon or Leica, and all under the guise of ' photography '. These old cameras are marvels of precision opto-mechanical engineering of the past. Instruments to freeze time in an analogue manner from a more relaxed and civilised past ( sorry I just noticed that I sounded like Obi one Kenobi and his light saber ), and as such they must be cherished, used and kept alive and not be allowed to become collector items in the hands of speculators. Thank you, you are at your best with these sort of videos. One man, a roll of film and an old mechanical camera with no hairy armpit auto focus mode.
I have friends with all the latest Digital gear. These cameras do so much now. I do like tech. It's very clever. Like the Tesla cars, computers, phones and TVs. I guess the tech in cameras today are useful for certain work, thinking of the paps and sports shooters that need instant focus and uploads to the press office. But I don't need all that for my photography. As I said in the video these cameras and others all have their own look on a print. I like that.
Great videos. Thanks. Just picked up one of the Retinette 030s myself, and having watched this video did some more research myself on the little button on the top. I managed to find a manual on line, where it states the reason for it is to allow the user to unload and then reload film half way through, the button indeed acting as a false shutter trigger to allow wind on without double exposure. Never thought to do this in nearly 60 years of photography, but I suppose it could have a use for someone! Interestingly Kodak dropped this button on later models.Please keep up the great work sharing these old treasures with us.
Thanks for your video. I acquired one of these camera's from a recently deceased relative. Researched it as I wanted to get the film it contained developed. Was going to then get rid of the camera. Your video has encouraged me to get it up and running again 🙂
It's great that you are doing parts of your current place, I know that as where i live changes, I am saddened by things I never shot!!! The other thing is that the cameras a both beautiful objects and tools!!!
Perfect Timing - I bought one of these this afternoon, excellent condition too. I certainly didn't need it and this will undoubtedly find itself as a display camera in a friends studio - but with it I also got a Kodalux L light meter with fully functioning selenium cell 🙂 Naturally I gotta' run a roll or two thru. That button is for double exposures - but - you'll also need to hold-back the film re-wind knob at the same time as depressing this button to achieve this.
Your videos featuring so many different cameras, specially folding cameras inspired me to buy one (folding) myself. I got myself an Zeiss Ikon Compur Rapid 6x9 (from 1950's it seems, 105mm f3.5) and I am loving it. It is a great camera to bring hiking as it is so light weight and produces nice landscapes with its 6x9 format. So thanks! :)
Honestly I never would have given these sort of cameras a second glance. But the images you’ve gotten out of these time and time again has shown they can produce quite good images with their own style…. It’s also part of the reason I like watching your channel. I don’t have the latest or greatest digital gear. I also don’t have the fancy Mamiya 7 or Leica M6 or something. It’s nice to see not everyone is chasing the “best” gear in the world
I got one in a box of junk. It had a stuck shutter. I stripped it down to the shutter blades which were full of oil. Once cleaned and put back together it works like a charm.
I have exactly the same camera. It also has a v self timer setting. The Schneider Reomar lens is a triplet design and they are surprisingly sharp, with good contrast and excellent colour rendition.
I own two Kodak Retina lll's, little c & big C. great German cameras and were very expensive back in the day. Today they are cheap but rarely work due to people not know how to use them and end up breaking the film advance. They have amazingly sharp lenses, I was lucky finding a old time camera repairman that worked these cameras over and now they work and look new. I still have the cameras and get them out for an occasional roll. Sadly the camera repairman has died of cancer in his mid- 70's he worked on cameras until the end not many of these guys left.
I have a Kodak Retinette 1B, with a working built-in light meter. Found it in a rubbish bin! - so it literally cost me nothing. Came with a Kodak rangefinder attachment, some filters, a lens hood, and the original box. Original price marked on the box £25-14s- 5d.
I think you should have a look at the Retinas from the late 1950's. These are the top of the range Kodaks, beautifully made in West Germany. The engineering is superb and the feel in the hand is, bar Leitz, as good as it gets. The lenses are superb and the 111c/C models feature interchangeable lenses (35, 50 and 85mm).
Gorgeous looking camera. I love my zone cameras, Agfa Isolette, 6 x 6, Agfa Billy Record 6 × 9. Really nice renders. I have a thing for folders. Very fun using distance and very s l o w. I was at a steam show with the Billy last weekend. I was there 7 hours and took 40 images. Sunny 16'd it and I am confident I got 90% + hit rate. They're so simple to use in my opinion.
He Kodak retinettes and retinas are really good cameras. I started with a hand me down IIA Retinette, now shoot it and a IIS and IIC IIIC retinas, really really cool cameras. Whilst they are Kodak, they are German designed and made.
I don't have Retinette but I have Retina Reflex s, this is beautifully made camera, complex in it's construction and easy to use, with working selenium light meter, and one detail that fascinates me, two mettal pieces, brackets I would say, on focus scale which moves farther or closer to each other when you change aperture so you can emedietly see depth of field, how cool is that?! I say that the man who constucted this camera is genius. And lenses are amazing too, I have 50mm f2.8 and 135mm f4 and I love these lenses 🙂
I recently got a "Prazisa" rangefinder, which looks somewhat similar to your Rowi. It works well, although I have had little chance to use it. There are so many interesting 35mm rangefinders and 120 folding cameras from the 30s through the 60s that I wouldn't know where to begin. My most useful accessory is my Sekonic Twinmate L-208 lightmeter. You can get good new light meters from $50 and decent used ones from $10.
If you like kodaks and are into camera technology there is a youtuber called Chris Sherlock who repairs them. He narrates everything he does and is very educational about cameras in general. He is former kodak repair tech and now free lances and runs the retinarescue web page too. Highly recommended. He literally fixed a camera once that used to be an ants nest.
Retinas and Retinettes are awesome cameras. For info and repairs, I can’t recommend Chris Sherlock highly enough. I had a Retina IIa that my father bought new in 1952. Chris restored it to like new condition and it’s my daily driver now.
I recently shot a roll of FP4 through a Retinette 1 and agree its a great camera, I sold it afterwards on ebay for £12.50, these are an absolute steel for the money! Try and get hold of a Vivitar ultra wide and slim, these give a low fi image similar to the holga, and have just 1 shutter speed, 1 aperture and a wiiiiide 22mm lens - great lens flare when shot into/towards the sun. Keep up the great content!
My first camera was Smena 6 still I proudly use it and is't much fun, because it's so simple but challenging to use. And after all it was my dad's first camera given to him by his dad who had this camera probably also as his starter camera :D, here The starter slr's are Prakticas cheap but grat East German cameras, which are easy to use and reliable with m42 mount with variety of great german Zeiss or Pentacon lenses to choose from.
Angenieux is a name that I have not heard in a long time. The last time that I heard anything about Angenieux, was in the mid 80s where they brought out two Nikon fit zooms, a 35 70 and a 70 200 if my memory serves me right, which had outstanding performance and a price to match.
That small button you thought was for the double exposure is actually to act as a sort of shutter button. It’s for the start of the film when you need to advance the film past the starter bit of the film. Futile in my opinion as you can just use the shutter as normal but that’s it’s function, to allow the film to be advanced without opening the shutter. Maybe it’s if the film didn’t advance and you don’t want a double exposure?
Good question. Probably KODAK D76. A good all-round developer thats always available. And I'd probably get the raw ingredients to make it cheaper and make it myself just in case over time it stops being produced.
Okay, dumb question coming up (at least I think its dumb). When you say 'no focusing' I'm a bit hazy. I totally get zone focusing with icons, the Olympus Trip is my favourite camera (thinking this through I've always just accepted this without considering how it works practically inside the camera); I totally get rangefinders and lining up the two images; I totally get zone focusing on SLR lenses using the distance scale (but also checking it TTL); I totally get how bellows cameras extend/contract the distance between lens and film to achieve focus. Here's the question; do some vintage cameras only have focusing by distance scales (meters/feet) with no 'zone' icons, are not rangefinders, no focusing by looking through the viewfinder or apparent extension/contraction of lens to film distance. If the answers is yes, yippee I've learnt something! If the answer is 'that's not what you meant' I'm confused. I'm happy for you to point me towards a website that explains this :-)
Zone icons, I guess that means little people, single, group, a mountain? Like the Holga. None of my old view cameras have these. They have the zone focusing scale on the lens. I think those icons came later for ease of use such as the Trip and the electro cameras. The camera in this video has no meter, no TTL viewing and just a distance scale so you have to either use the zone focusing or for more precision measure the distance from the camera to the subject. Later models they started to introduce light meters and range finders. Here is a link Iain to a website featuring the models and changes over the years camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Kodak_Retinette
@@ShootFilmLikeaBoss Thanks for the prompt reply. The answer was what I suspected it to be, once I'd got my addled brain to consider zonal focusing on the Trip. Now I just have to get my head around how practically the focus changes on all zonal distance focusing cameras without any 'apparent' change in the lens to film distance. My brain hurts - does not compute ! These camera manufacturer chaps were jolly clever :-)
@@iainmc9859 Just keep it simple. If you are shooting at f11 then set your infinite symbol on the focus ring to f11 and on the other side it will tell you your minimum distance. Thats pretty much what I did for those shots. I use it a lot for scapes and street stuff. No so much for portraits and flowers
@@ShootFilmLikeaBoss Was reading that you can use small golf telescopes that use a laser to tell you how far away an object is instead of a rangefinder device/guesstimate/ bloody long tape measure.
i just ended developping kentmere 100 in rodinal 1+50. found 10 and 15min. i decided to go for 12 at 20° which became 9min at 23° according to the the massive dev chart. i thought it was just a touch underdevelopped. but i also suspect the lighmeter in my minox to underexpose a bit. will try 14min next time !
Was wondering because of the time when this camera was released and how radioactive materials was used in lenses between 1940s to 1980s, is this lens radioactive?
That button is the film release button. You are supposed to use it to advance the film to no1 frame. Not like other cameras where you simply shoot a blank frame untill you reach one.
Set the shutter to match the speed closest to your film and shoot at F8. As long as it's not super bright day! Set the lens to infinite at f8 on the distance scale on the lens and that should give you a range of between 10ft and infinite and you should get nice pictures.
1.- Those cameras are really fin to use ;) 2.- Herr in Chile, a few years ago some "really-really-smart-ass" guy try to sell a Werra for about $2.000 USD!!!! he claimed in the internet ad, that the Werra was used in WWII by the German Soldiers!!!!!! just like you and me take the camera to a trip hahahahahaha
Folsom Prison Blues! That brought a smile to my face. I wasn't expecting to hear that.
He said I'll give you some Johnny Cash. Bless him.
How nice to watch a channel about photography, that is not an advertising channel for the latest 100MP offerings from Fuji, Sony, Canon or even Nikon or Leica, and all under the guise of ' photography '. These old cameras are marvels of precision opto-mechanical engineering of the past. Instruments to freeze time in an analogue manner from a more relaxed and civilised past ( sorry I just noticed that I sounded like Obi one Kenobi and his light saber ), and as such they must be cherished, used and kept alive and not be allowed to become collector items in the hands of speculators. Thank you, you are at your best with these sort of videos. One man, a roll of film and an old mechanical camera with no hairy armpit auto focus mode.
I have friends with all the latest Digital gear. These cameras do so much now. I do like tech. It's very clever. Like the Tesla cars, computers, phones and TVs. I guess the tech in cameras today are useful for certain work, thinking of the paps and sports shooters that need instant focus and uploads to the press office. But I don't need all that for my photography. As I said in the video these cameras and others all have their own look on a print. I like that.
@@ShootFilmLikeaBoss well, your videos are very refreshing!
Great videos. Thanks. Just picked up one of the Retinette 030s myself, and having watched this video did some more research myself on the little button on the top. I managed to find a manual on line, where it states the reason for it is to allow the user to unload and then reload film half way through, the button indeed acting as a false shutter trigger to allow wind on without double exposure. Never thought to do this in nearly 60 years of photography, but I suppose it could have a use for someone! Interestingly Kodak dropped this button on later models.Please keep up the great work sharing these old treasures with us.
Thanks Michael
Thanks for your video. I acquired one of these camera's from a recently deceased relative. Researched it as I wanted to get the film it contained developed. Was going to then get rid of the camera. Your video has encouraged me to get it up and running again 🙂
Great video! I like those old 35mm quirky cameras too. Folks who are not snobs have way more fun! :)
Totally agree!
Thank you for taking the time showing this, the love of getting an interesting camera that works...
It's great that you are doing parts of your current place, I know that as where i live changes, I am saddened by things I never shot!!! The other thing is that the cameras a both beautiful objects and tools!!!
Perfect Timing - I bought one of these this afternoon, excellent condition too. I certainly didn't need it and this will undoubtedly find itself as a display camera in a friends studio - but with it I also got a Kodalux L light meter with fully functioning selenium cell 🙂 Naturally I gotta' run a roll or two thru. That button is for double exposures - but - you'll also need to hold-back the film re-wind knob at the same time as depressing this button to achieve this.
Stunning, stunning, stunning !!!!
Thank you! Cheers!
You scored with those Kodaks. I am thinking about getting one. Your shots are beautiful!
Your videos featuring so many different cameras, specially folding cameras inspired me to buy one (folding) myself. I got myself an Zeiss Ikon Compur Rapid 6x9 (from 1950's it seems, 105mm f3.5) and I am loving it. It is a great camera to bring hiking as it is so light weight and produces nice landscapes with its 6x9 format. So thanks! :)
Honestly I never would have given these sort of cameras a second glance. But the images you’ve gotten out of these time and time again has shown they can produce quite good images with their own style…. It’s also part of the reason I like watching your channel. I don’t have the latest or greatest digital gear. I also don’t have the fancy Mamiya 7 or Leica M6 or something. It’s nice to see not everyone is chasing the “best” gear in the world
Cheers Bryce. I was like you when I first picked one up and then was surprised. They are worth getting for the price.
I bought myself an Halina 35x new back in 1966. Not a bad little camera for the money. Still have it.
I got one in a box of junk. It had a stuck shutter. I stripped it down to the shutter blades which were full of oil. Once cleaned and put back together it works like a charm.
Wow! Glad you got it fixed.
I have exactly the same camera. It also has a v self timer setting.
The Schneider Reomar lens is a triplet design and they are surprisingly sharp, with good contrast and excellent colour rendition.
Thanks for the info!
I own two Kodak Retina lll's, little c & big C. great German cameras and were very expensive back in the day. Today they are cheap but rarely work due to people not know how to use them and end up breaking the film advance. They have amazingly sharp lenses, I was lucky finding a old time camera repairman that worked these cameras over and now they work and look new. I still have the cameras and get them out for an occasional roll. Sadly the camera repairman has died of cancer in his mid- 70's he worked on cameras until the end not many of these guys left.
Bless him. I imagine many cameras out there he's fixed still giving pleasure
I have a Kodak Retinette 1B, with a working built-in light meter. Found it in a rubbish bin! - so it literally cost me nothing. Came with a Kodak rangefinder attachment, some filters, a lens hood, and the original box. Original price marked on the box £25-14s- 5d.
I am using two Kodak Retina, they operate the same but are foldings. Love them !
I think you should have a look at the Retinas from the late 1950's. These are the top of the range Kodaks, beautifully made in West Germany. The engineering is superb and the feel in the hand is, bar Leitz, as good as it gets. The lenses are superb and the 111c/C models feature interchangeable lenses (35, 50 and 85mm).
Gorgeous looking camera. I love my zone cameras, Agfa Isolette, 6 x 6, Agfa Billy Record 6 × 9. Really nice renders. I have a thing for folders. Very fun using distance and very s l o w. I was at a steam show with the Billy last weekend. I was there 7 hours and took 40 images. Sunny 16'd it and I am confident I got 90% + hit rate. They're so simple to use in my opinion.
Thanks for sharing!
He Kodak retinettes and retinas are really good cameras. I started with a hand me down IIA Retinette, now shoot it and a IIS and IIC IIIC retinas, really really cool cameras. Whilst they are Kodak, they are German designed and made.
I don't have Retinette but I have Retina Reflex s, this is beautifully made camera, complex in it's construction and easy to use, with working selenium light meter, and one detail that fascinates me, two mettal pieces, brackets I would say, on focus scale which moves farther or closer to each other when you change aperture so you can emedietly see depth of field, how cool is that?! I say that the man who constucted this camera is genius. And lenses are amazing too, I have 50mm f2.8 and 135mm f4 and I love these lenses 🙂
Always fancied one of these older cameras... and just roam around with it in rubbish weather.
Don't think they are weather sealed but for a tenner...
I like this type of camera
I love cocking the shutter of the retinette.
£22 was a lot of dosh back in the day. Glad you liked it. I’m keeping the Zeiss Bob 510 I told you about!
Thanks again Neil.
I love the Zeiss Bob. I picked one up years ago on eBay for £10. It's mint but works and so pocket size.
I recently got a "Prazisa" rangefinder, which looks somewhat similar to your Rowi. It works well, although I have had little chance to use it. There are so many interesting 35mm rangefinders and 120 folding cameras from the 30s through the 60s that I wouldn't know where to begin. My most useful accessory is my Sekonic Twinmate L-208 lightmeter. You can get good new light meters from $50 and decent used ones from $10.
Yes there are lots of old cameras out there. If you can pick any of them up for a small price it may be worth buying them and see how you get on.
If you like kodaks and are into camera technology there is a youtuber called Chris Sherlock who repairs them. He narrates everything he does and is very educational about cameras in general. He is former kodak repair tech and now free lances and runs the retinarescue web page too. Highly recommended. He literally fixed a camera once that used to be an ants nest.
Retinas and Retinettes are awesome cameras. For info and repairs, I can’t recommend Chris Sherlock highly enough. I had a Retina IIa that my father bought new in 1952. Chris restored it to like new condition and it’s my daily driver now.
I recently shot a roll of FP4 through a Retinette 1 and agree its a great camera, I sold it afterwards on ebay for £12.50, these are an absolute steel for the money! Try and get hold of a Vivitar ultra wide and slim, these give a low fi image similar to the holga, and have just 1 shutter speed, 1 aperture and a wiiiiide 22mm lens - great lens flare when shot into/towards the sun. Keep up the great content!
Nice at 22mm!
Flea markets are a great place to find these old cameras cheap. I've paid as little as $5 for one (it was a Kodak Pony 135 with leather case).
My first camera was Smena 6 still I proudly use it and is't much fun, because it's so simple but challenging to use. And after all it was my dad's first camera given to him by his dad who had this camera probably also as his starter camera :D, here The starter slr's are Prakticas cheap but grat East German cameras, which are easy to use and reliable with m42 mount with variety of great german Zeiss or Pentacon lenses to choose from.
Great to hear it's running through the family! Yes M42 screw fits are plentiful online
There was a Retinette with an angenieux if you want a very cosmopolitan german made camera sold by an american company with a french lens.
Angenieux is a name that I have not heard in a long time. The last time that I heard anything about Angenieux, was in the mid 80s where they brought out two Nikon fit zooms, a 35 70 and a 70 200 if my memory serves me right, which had outstanding performance and a price to match.
Thanks for the info Levi.
That small button you thought was for the double exposure is actually to act as a sort of shutter button. It’s for the start of the film when you need to advance the film past the starter bit of the film. Futile in my opinion as you can just use the shutter as normal but that’s it’s function, to allow the film to be advanced without opening the shutter. Maybe it’s if the film didn’t advance and you don’t want a double exposure?
Hello..one quick question..if you could only use one black and white film developer, for the next 20 years, what you pick? Thanks from New York City
Good question. Probably KODAK D76. A good all-round developer thats always available. And I'd probably get the raw ingredients to make it cheaper and make it myself just in case over time it stops being produced.
@@ShootFilmLikeaBoss Thanks for all your help..
Okay, dumb question coming up (at least I think its dumb). When you say 'no focusing' I'm a bit hazy.
I totally get zone focusing with icons, the Olympus Trip is my favourite camera (thinking this through I've always just accepted this without considering how it works practically inside the camera); I totally get rangefinders and lining up the two images; I totally get zone focusing on SLR lenses using the distance scale (but also checking it TTL); I totally get how bellows cameras extend/contract the distance between lens and film to achieve focus.
Here's the question; do some vintage cameras only have focusing by distance scales (meters/feet) with no 'zone' icons, are not rangefinders, no focusing by looking through the viewfinder or apparent extension/contraction of lens to film distance. If the answers is yes, yippee I've learnt something! If the answer is 'that's not what you meant' I'm confused.
I'm happy for you to point me towards a website that explains this :-)
Zone icons, I guess that means little people, single, group, a mountain? Like the Holga. None of my old view cameras have these. They have the zone focusing scale on the lens. I think those icons came later for ease of use such as the Trip and the electro cameras. The camera in this video has no meter, no TTL viewing and just a distance scale so you have to either use the zone focusing or for more precision measure the distance from the camera to the subject. Later models they started to introduce light meters and range finders. Here is a link Iain to a website featuring the models and changes over the years camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Kodak_Retinette
@@ShootFilmLikeaBoss Thanks for the prompt reply.
The answer was what I suspected it to be, once I'd got my addled brain to consider zonal focusing on the Trip. Now I just have to get my head around how practically the focus changes on all zonal distance focusing cameras without any 'apparent' change in the lens to film distance. My brain hurts - does not compute ! These camera manufacturer chaps were jolly clever :-)
@@iainmc9859 Just keep it simple. If you are shooting at f11 then set your infinite symbol on the focus ring to f11 and on the other side it will tell you your minimum distance. Thats pretty much what I did for those shots. I use it a lot for scapes and street stuff. No so much for portraits and flowers
I've put a post up Iain on my website which may help. www.rogerlowe.co.uk/zone-focusing/
@@ShootFilmLikeaBoss Was reading that you can use small golf telescopes that use a laser to tell you how far away an object is instead of a rangefinder device/guesstimate/ bloody long tape measure.
Makes me want to get some 35mm and take the Argus C3 (AKA "The brick") out for a shoot.
The English chap in the Kodak Commercial was very convincing on account of his accent.
My first proper camera after the Brownie 127. 👍
i just ended developping kentmere 100 in rodinal 1+50. found 10 and 15min. i decided to go for 12 at 20° which became 9min at 23° according to the the massive dev chart. i thought it was just a touch underdevelopped. but i also suspect the lighmeter in my minox to underexpose a bit. will try 14min next time !
My leader I couldn't even see through it against light. I used the MDC but I did think it was long 15 mins. Better than under though,
Hello. May I ask you what is the name of the rangefinder piece shown on 1st camera. Thank you for your time.
It's a Rowi rangefinder. Usually on eBay when I've looked 👍
Was wondering because of the time when this camera was released and how radioactive materials was used in lenses between 1940s to 1980s, is this lens radioactive?
I think many lenses of this ere were. Not enough to worry about
That button is the film release button. You are supposed to use it to advance the film to no1 frame. Not like other cameras where you simply shoot a blank frame untill you reach one.
cheers Janne. I shall try that
If this camera rocks, I suggest using a fast shutter speed or a tripod for optimum results.
it's not going anywhere so in time I'll get around to shooting it more
I got this camera for a fiver on ebay today. Can't wait to mess up some film with the wrong exposures
Set the shutter to match the speed closest to your film and shoot at F8. As long as it's not super bright day! Set the lens to infinite at f8 on the distance scale on the lens and that should give you a range of between 10ft and infinite and you should get nice pictures.
@@ShootFilmLikeaBoss Oh awesome mate. That's great advice. Look forward to using it more now
1.- Those cameras are really fin to use ;)
2.- Herr in Chile, a few years ago some "really-really-smart-ass" guy try to sell a Werra for about $2.000 USD!!!! he claimed in the internet ad, that the Werra was used in WWII by the German Soldiers!!!!!! just like you and me take the camera to a trip hahahahahaha
WW2 ha ha. That was the Kodak VPC