Camera Talk.

[Chako]

When I was 8 years old, I expressed a desire to take photographs. That was when my father lent me his old camera, a Kodak Retinette 1A which he bought off of his sister when she found out it was too complicated for her to use. This would be sometime in the 60s. At the time, I didn't know that my father was into photography as well in his younger days. So after a quick discussion on the how and what not to do, especially in the care of a delicate piece of equipment like a camera, he sent me off to explore photography with a few rolls of film. Thus my journey started in the early 80s.

Well I took care of that camera, and gradually through many rolls of film, I was able to figure out this thing called photography. The Retinette 1A is a crude camera by today's comparison. It did not feature a built in light meter, thus I had to learn how to use an external light meter to figure out proper exposure. Not only that, you had to guess the distance to get proper focus. What a wonderful learning tool for a kid wanting to learn photography. This camera forced me to calculate distance and use of an external light meter for proper exposure. Now the nice thing with old handheld light meters, they worked off of an analogue scale. The wonderful thing about this, you can immediately see the correlation between shutter speeds, and f stops.

Boy did this camera take wonderfully sharp and beautiful pictures...that is once you learned a few things. I guess I am feeling a bit nostalgic. Today's cameras are feature heavy, and in some ways, makes learning the basics of photography harder. In many other ways, it has simplified the learning as well. With film cameras, you had to take the photo, write down your settings in a note pad, finish a roll and wait for the photo-finisher to develop your film. Only then could you compare your notes and see what your results turned out. Today with digital, you can take unlimited photos with immediate feedback and erase the ones you don't like on the fly. That alone is worth its weight in gold, but, I feel that the older filmed cameras had character which many newer cameras seem to lack. Not only that, but photography in those days forced you to do a process, and in that process, one became a better photographer because it forced you to get down into the nitty gritty of f stops, focal lengths, distance, shutter speeds, and light.

With that said, I went digital back in 1998/9 and haven't looked back, but what I knew, came from the older camera...and because of this, this old Kodak holds a special place in my heart.

This is a Type 40 Kodak Retinette which was produced from 1963 to 1966. My example features a Prontor 250S (1/30-1/250 +B) shutter which was found in 243638 to 419999 serial number production cameras. The lens is a Schneider-Kreuznach Reomar 1:2.8/45mm. Kodak produced a higher end camera called the Retina. The Retinette line was their budged camera. Even so, the photos this camera could produce made a few of my more advanced cameras shy away in shame. It all boils down to that wonderful German optics.

I still have the box and instructions.



Back in the day, manufacturers made fantastic hard cases for cameras. It seems to be a lost art, as today's materials are cheaper, and the quality is certainly not there.



And here is the cute little viewfinder.



Looking at it, you would never guess that an 8 year old used this camera for a whole summer, right up to High School. This was my prized possession on loan from my dad.



The back is rather simple. That circle is the viewfinder. Just below the hot-shoe is the serial number. This camera is number 414251. On the right side is the film counter. That little metallic cylinder is the shutter button. On the left side, your film type indicator.



This lens is phenomenal. There is an honest to goodness depth of field scale that is usable. Unfortunately, this is left out on many modern day optics, making it hard to figure depth of field, or to use the Sunny 16 rule.



And a bonus shot.



Here is a good youtube video review of an older Retinette, but with good explanation on some of the camera operations, manual light meters, etc.



 

[Chako]

My next camera I would like to talk about is the Pentax SF10. Back in 1989, I was in high school taking a photography class. At the time, I had an Olympus OM10, which was a nice manual 35mm camera with a built in meter. However, once in photography class, I saw another student with a Minolta Maxxum 7000 autofocus camera. Now the Maxxum 7000 was the first commercially successful autofocus camera produced, which was introduced in 1985. This Pentax SF10 came out in 1988 to be a direct competitor to the Minolta Maxxum 7000.

Well I was blown away by this new way of auotofocusing. I started to save my pennies and towards the end of the course, I was able to purchase this Pentax SF10. Because I was a starving student, i couldn't afford the more expensive Pentax branded lenses, so ended up with Magnicon lense which were Black's Photography store branded lenses. I still have these lenses, and I must say, they weren't near as good as the built in German optics of the Retinette 1A.



Not only did this camera feature autofocus, but it also had a red lamp which allowed me to focus in complete darkness. Yes, I played with this feature in the darkroom plenty of times.



What made the SF10 interesting, was the pictographic LCD display that showed you where to change things. It was Pentax's attempt to make a fairly complex camera simpler to use. I did appreciate this feature greatly when I first got it.



Another neat lighting trick. This camera features a very elegant pop up flash which also worked with an external flash gun as it was balanced over your hand. Many cameras since have not gotten the flash placement correctly to me. Pentax did however. This method allowed the use of large external flashes that were well weight balanced. You could also use both flashes together. Not many modern cameras can do that trick these days. Mind you, the exposure algorithms are better these days then back in the late 80's.





So this was my third camera. Sadly I no longer have the Olympus OM10, but I sill do have all my old Pentax gear.

[derekmac]

I love old cameras.  I got into photography in probably grade 5, and used my mothers old Petri camera.  It was IMHO, a great camera to learn on.  From that, I started using my grandfathers Minolta Maxxum 7000.  Wow, what a camera compared to the old Petri.  I used that for many, many years, until I bought my own Canon SLR, which sadly, was stolen from my car only a few months after buying it.

My first DSLR was a Sony A100 which I decided on as I really liked Minolta glass, and could use the lenses that my grandfather had for his 7000.  I sold that, and bought my Sony a57, which I am more than happy with.  This camera has blazing fast focus, and can capture 12fps (albeit at 8mp), or 8fps at full resolution.

I want to invest in a good telephoto lens, either a 300 or 400mm, and a good 50mm f/1.4 lens.  I can get a Minolta f/1.4 50mm prime for pretty cheap, but the telephoto is going to cost me big bucks.  I do have a good 70-210 f/4 lens, and a fantastic 100mm f/2.8.