Pete's Photographic Blog

This isn't a full entry but a report of a potentially exciting find.  On a visit to a charity shop I noticed a small brown leather camera case.  On opening the case I saw a Kodak Retina II camera in good condition.  It all seemed to work so I thought I was buying a 1950's Retina for £8.  As I work for Kodak Ltd I like collecting Kodak memorabilia.  On return to work I did a little research into the camera. It appears that this is a Kodak Retina II Nr. 122.  This is an extremely rare model.  Only about 4000 were made and lots of these were recalled because of the faulty lever film wind mechanism.  There may only be a few hundred surviving in the world.  It's value could be anything from a few hundred pounds, even into low four figure amounts (see Ebay shot at bottom of page).  Looks like it was a good purchase. The serial number is 959969 and it was built in late 1936 or early 1937 in Stuttgart, Germany.  It has a Compur Rapid shutter with 1s to 1/500th second plus B

Back in the seventies my first 'proper' camera was a Russian Zenit B SLR.  This was a fully manual camera i.e. it did not have a built in light meter.  There were three ways to get the correct exposure.  One was to use the exposure guide printed on the instruction sheet (later printed inside the cardboard box) that came with the film.  You would have to estimate the lighting from a range of examples and set the camera accordingly.  A variation on this is the 'Sunny 16' rule.  This states that on a bright, clear sunny day with the sun behind you, your exposure at an aperture of f16 is 1 over the ISO of your film.  I.e. for a ISO200 film the shutter speed should be 1/200th second.  Most cameras will have a 1/250th second setting so you would set to this and the exposure latitude in the film would mean you still got a good exposure.  Obviously you can adjust the shutter and aperture in stops to keep the correct exposure i.e. one stop change would be 1/500th second at