About using vintage cameras - Kodak Retinette IA

In January 2002 Mar and I spent a weekend in Paris for the first time. We were together for only five months then and I keep very dear memories from that trip.

One of these memories is the camera that Mar had with her. Her mom let her take the camera she had been using since she was young, a Kodak Retinette IA. I remember being fascinated by its old looks and the odd film advance lever on the bottom side. But, most of all, I remember the challenge of having to estimate your focusing distance and also how nice did the black&white pictures that we took come out.

Years after that, as we had already discovered our passion for photography, Mar's mom let us take the Retinette. We had it checked by a camera repairman, the last one still active in Salzburg. Even before we got the camera back, I was eager to start using it again. This was my first serious experimenting with film photography.

The Kodak Retinette IA is a viewfinder camera. That means that there is a viewfinder that allows to frame more or less what the lens will see.


(Nikon Coolpix S200, 6.3mm, 0.3s, f/3.1, ISO 100)
"More or less" because you are not actually looking through the lens, as it happens with a reflex camera, so there is a small perspective difference, called parallax, which is especially noticeable when looking at close subjects. In fact, the Retinette has quite nice parallax correction aids, but there is no way of seeing what is in focus. The focusing is done by estimating the distance to your subject and setting this estimated distance on the focusing ring. In fact, the whole lens turns as it is focused. There are some quite whimsical graphic aids for the distance ranges corresponding to portrait, group photo and landscape.


(EOS 40D, EF 50mm f/1.8, 4s, f/8.0, ISO 100)
The lens is a Schneider Kreuznach Reomar 45mm f/2.8. The focal length (45mm) is very close to the diagonal of a frame (24x36mm means an approximate diagonal of 43mm), which makes it a normal lens. After taking a picture, film advance is accomplished by pulling a lever in the bottom with your right thumb. This same lever automatically cocks the shutter for the next shot.

What I love about the Retinette is its simplicity, compared to our previous cameras. You just need to worry about shutter speed, aperture and focus. Film speed has to be decided only once, as you choose which film to load. All the remaining energy can be effectively used to try to make great pictures. That means composing, excluding, simplifying, ... instead of fumbling with exposure metering modes and back focusing issues.

When using the Retinette for the first time after we had it serviced it was a wonderful surprise to see how incredibly smooth everything worked. I wonder if any of our modern cameras will be in such great shape in 40 years...

There is something that I feel, very difficult to describe but still very real, when I operate a vintage photographic camera. It is a mix of reverence, as this device was already in the world before I was born, and kind of a comforting feeling, because in spite of its age, it still works perfectly. You know you have a piece of fine craftsmanship in your hands, whose designers are most probably already dead, but I like to think that they would smile if they could see me. In a similar way some people, especially the elderly, smile at me when they see the Retinette in my hands, probably having happy memories of a time long gone.

Kodak Retinette IA (camera-wiki.org)
My Retinette IA flickr set

Maker	Kodak (Stuttgart)
Model	Retinette IA, Typ 044
Type	Viewfinder
Lens	Schneider-Kreuznach Reomar 45mm f/2.8
Shutter	Prontor 250S 1/30 - 1/250 + B
Film type	35mm (135)
Year	1963-66
Country	West Germany

Film

NOTE: This post appeared originally on my other blog, Die Murmeltierjahre im Land des Frühschoppens, on 29th November 2010. Since this post contains the seed (“I think that artistic creativity needs new challenges permanently, in order not to fall into routine and boredom”) that made me decide starting this blog, a (photo) challenge a day ..., I thought it was fitting to publish it here, with some minor adaptations.

“Digital macht alles kaputt!”

The old lady complained from the other side of the counter, with the mixture of sadness and anger of the one who knows the enemy is so big that the only reasonable thing to do is to step out and wait for the end.

The place, Foto Bahnhof, close to the train station, is one of the last photography stores in Salzburg. After she told me that they did not have what I was looking for any more, I asked her if she knew about other photo stores in the city where I could find it. She shook her head and started listing stores that do not any longer exist. The last one she mentioned, Foto Mayrhofer, close to the Schranne, closed just a couple of months ago, after its owner went into retirement. It struck me that I was in front of one of the last members of an almost extinguished species. Her clear blue eyes darkened for a moment, as she realized that I had understood the bitter consequence of the syllogism she did not fully state.

The advent of digital photography, that reached the general public in the 90s, meant the last push to the democratization of photography. During the 20th century, photography evolved to come closer and closer to the point & shoot ideal, fine-tuning automatic processes in such a way that the only actions left to the user were framing and shooting.

The advantages of a digital camera can be summed up in three: immediacy, low cost and storing and compression. Immediacy on review, because the picture appears on a more or less big screen, with more or less colours, instants after shooting. Low cost of operation because shutter opening and closing has a total cost that tends very quickly to zero. Compression because, thanks to clever algorithms, the optical data captured by the sensor needs a tiny fraction of the total storage capacity of the device, which results in a great autonomy of operation.


(Diana Mini, Kodacolor 200, EI 200/24°)
Technological innovation has countless positive aspects, but its ruthless logic leaves old and sometimes venerable technologies on the side as road kill, because they make no sense any more or, simply, because they are not profitable. Digital photography sensors pushed film cameras to the background, making them museum display items or, sadly, mere pieces of junk that one does not know what to do with.


(Diana Mini, Ilford HP5 Plus 400, EI 400/27°)
But not all technologies are equal and when a technology, as it is the case with photography, is used as a support for artistic expression, I think that it is healthy to make a conscious effort and renounce to the multiple automatisms and advantages from time to time, because creativity and inventiveness usually work better when the first difficulties to overcome are technical limitations. I think that artistic creativity needs new challenges permanently, in order not to fall into routine and boredom.


(Kodak Retinette IA, Fujicolor C36, EI 200/24°)
I have worked you through this long introduction just to talk about the new territory that I am beginning to explore, pretty blindfolded at first, but with great hope and motivation. One of the photographic treasures that we brought from New York last year was Marona's new toy camera, a Diana Mini, from Lomography, that uses 35mm film.


(EOS 350D, EF 50mm f/1.8, 1/250, f/6.3, ISO 100)
The second photographic treasure, this time from Barcelona, is an old camera that we borrowed from Marona's mum, a Kodak Retinette IA that, after its serial number, was made between 1963 and 1966 and that we let repair and adjust. In spite of the almost 50 years passed since its production, the camera works with a smoothness that a lot of present-day cameras can only wish for.


(EOS 40D, EF 50mm f/1.8, 4s, f/8.0, ISO 100)
The Retinette makes you really think: from distance to your subject, which you need to guess and adjust without any confirmation chance, to exposure, for which you have to make use of rules of thumb or the photographic eye that began evolving as we decided to measure exposure manually with our digital cameras as well.


(this lovely picture of me was taken by Marona!)
It is nothing more than another step in my going back to the origins, back to the basics, that I already talked about in a photographic context. I love this feeling of going back to the origin, because I feel like I am doing real photography.

Is it maybe vanity? Is it just that I want to stand out from the crowd? I don't know... But I guess the reason I went to Foto Bahnhof, to ask for advice about second hand twin-lens reflex cameras, gives a hint that what I really like is when people look at me as if I were crazy, as I take out venerable cameras (with no screen on the back!) from their old leather cases and I start taking pictures with them.