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LMOST everyone, photographer or not, knows the name Kodak. More than any other company in the world Kodak brought popular photography to Mr. and Mrs. Everyman, and their children, turning out millions of simple, cheap and reliable cameras from factories in the US, Canada and UK, together with a lesser number of more upmarket cameras from the US and German factories and countless rolls of film in the familiar yellow boxes.
     Some collectors specialise in Kodaks, or even in a particular type of Kodak camera from Box Brownies to Retinas. As a general collector with an interest in almost anything photographic I’m content to have a few representative examples from over the past 100 or so years.

AS MANYof you already know, Kodak’s Retina was designed by the quite brilliant Dr. August Nagel. I’m not going to run through details of Nagel’s long career in camera design except to say that after owning or managing a number of camera companies he found himself part of the huge Zeiss Ikon group in 1926. But he just didn’t fit in with the rather east-German management structure at Dresden. He came from Stuttgart, quite a long way to the west of Dresden, and after two years he’d had enough. He returned to Stuttgart to set up his own company once again but, faced with a world depression in the early 1930s, he needed development capital.
      This was provided by Kodak who had been looking for a manufacturing base on the European mainland. In 1932 Kodak bought Nagel Camerawerk but left Nagel more or less alone as technical director, and still head of the company in all but title. In return he produced a number of excellent Kodak cameras including the Retina, launched towards the end of 1934. With the Retina came

My earliest Retina at the moment is this Type  118 which was made during 1935 and 1936.

the disposable cassette making loading 35mm film as easy as loading roll film, and 35mm photography was never the same again. From being the province of a relatively few moneyed people who could afford a Leica or a Contax it became the film format for anyone. The Retina was later undercut in price by Agfa’s Karat, but though I like Karats they’re not in the same class as Retinas.
     More than 60,000 Retinas were made and sold in the first year of production. I’m not even going to attempt to list and describe all the models and variations of the folding Retina. I shall content myself with talking about the few I have in my collection.
     I don’t, unfortunately, have one of the very early Retinas, Type 117 which was made only during 1934 and 1935, but I have one of its very close relatives, the Type 118 only some 9,000 of which were made during 1935 and 1936, and a Type 119 made between 1936 and 1938 which notched up 39,000. The main changes with this model were that the winding knob got smaller, the rewind knob got much slimmer and taller and the exposure counter was moved up on the raised part of the top plate where it was inset. Both have f/3.5 Schneider Xenar lenses, and both have Compur shutters running from 1 sec to 1/300 sec.
     I’ve grouped these two together because they’re the only Retinas I’ve got with the shutter release on the shutter itself. Nagel obviously realised the inconvenience of this and provided the cameras as standard with a little stubby release button, rather like a miniature cable release without its cable, which screws into the cable release socket on the Compur and makes operating it with the left hand easy and convenient. Both mine have got one but sadly many have been lost over the years. If you find one going for pennies, pick it up because you never know when you might find an early Retina without one.
     Like all the early Retinas these are

More Retina pictures to come

beautifully engineered, truly pocketable, little cameras which are a delight to use. Yes, they’re a little more trouble than cameras made years later in that you have to judge exposures (or use a hand-held meter), and judge distances, but then any collector who likes to use his vintage cameras must, with a few exceptions, learn to do these things. Photography was a more leisurely hobby in the 1930s, and photographers accepted these things as part of learning to use a camera. A couple of summers ago I decided to give my Type 118 an airing so I loaded it with 200 ISO colour print film, slipped it in my pocket and took it to a steam traction engine rally where I shot off a couple of rolls. The uncoated Xenar coped superbly with colour and gave pictures with good saturation and excellent sharpness.
     Next in terms of date comes my Type 148, still a Retina I but with a chromium plated top plate having a much taller step in it. It also has a body release for operation with your right hand, and the cable release socket has also left the shutter and migrated up to the top plate. It was made only during 1939, and as far as I’ve been able to find out was the first one to forsake the traditional look of a Compur shutter with a black circle inside the plated speed change ring in favour of a complete chromium plated front to the shutter. The word Kodak is written in large capital letters on a plate screwed to the shutter front, and the words Compur Rapid relegated to much smaller print at the bottom of the speed ring. It still has a Schneider f/3.5 Xenar but being a Compur Rapid the shutter speeds now run up to 1/550 sec.
     The last of my pre-war Retinas, again made only during 1939 is a Retina IIa Type 150. It’s quite a lot larger and heavier than the early models. The Retina had grown up, and lost some of the youthful charm of the early models. It almost belongs to a different era. But what it lost in charm it more than made up for in user convenience and easy handling. For a start there’s an accurate and clear coupled rangefinder so you no longer had to guess how many six-foot men laid end to end would reach from you to your subject – just as well, because the lens distance is scaled in metres. The body release is just about the same height as the wind-on knob, and quite close to it, so to take the picture you rest your finger on top of the winding knob and just pivot the tip down. Coupled with a very smooth release this makes it easier to avoid camera shake on those shots where you’ve just got to drop down below 1/50 sec. But you still have to cock the shutter separately from winding on. There’s an accessory shoe on the top, but I’m not sure why. The shutter isn’t synchronised for flash, you’ve got a built-in coupled rangefinder and it doesn’t have an interchangeable lens, so what else are you likely to want to clip on the top?
     The lens is now an f/2 Schneider Xenon, a cut above the Xenar, and it sits in a Compur Rapid that’s gone back to the old look of a black ring inside the speed ring. The door over the lens is deeper than before and it no longer has the handy little fold-down foot for steadying the camera if you want to take a long exposure in upright format. It’s not quite so easy to slip it into your pocket, but at last it’s a Retina with lugs for a neck strap; much appreciated.
     Last in date order, but dropping back in model number, is my only post-war model so far, a Retina Ia made between 1951 and 1954 Not so large nor so heavy as the IIa. But still not as dinky as the early models. There’s no rangefinder, but there’s a very smooth lever wind which also cocks the shutter, so you’re not so likely to miss the decisive moment by forgetting. The shutter runs up to 1/500 sec and it’s a Synchro Compur, and at last I’ve got a Retina with which I can use a small flash so the accessory shoe means something. The lens on mine is an f/3.5 Xenar though an f/2.8 Xenar was available as an option. Oh, it’s also got strap lugs.
     What more do you want? A lever wind and a coupled rangefinder and a Xenon and a Synchro Compur? Go and get yourself a post-war model IIa. I’m on the look-out, but I haven’t yet found one at the right price. Admittedly my idea of prices is notorious for being on the low side, but there were 269,000 IIa models made, and I don’t believe in running after a camera or a bus – there’s always another one coming along.
     In sorting out the various models of Retina, and dating them, I found Brian Coe’s book Kodak, The First 100 Years, and the serial number dating list on the Schneider Optics website invaluable.

FIRST introduced in 1897 this was the camera that launched what became the most popular roll film negative size, 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches. But not on 120 film, the film was designated 105. 120 didn't appear till 1901. The 105 and 120 spools are the same width but the end flanges on 120 are slightly smaller diameter and thicker. It's possible to use 120 film in the camera, indeed there was an empty metal 120 spool in the chamber when I got it. The 120 backing paper is slightly narrower, and isn't a snug fit against the inside edges of the very thin 105 end flanges, so you could get edge fogging using a 105 take-up spool . You would have to use two 120 spools. The thicker end flanges make make 120 spools a slightly tight fit in a 105 camera, but with care and a bit of fiddling they will go in. The camera would also need modifying. I haven't got any 105 backing paper but the 1 to 8 numbers must have been on the right of the paper looking at the back of the camera.. On 120 film they're on the left, with 1 to 16 on the right.      
      My camera has been modified. The red window on the right has been blocked off with a disc of leatherette and a new window drilled opposite it on the left. It's been very neatly done, with the edges of the leather covering turned down into the edges of the hole, and looks almost as if it could have been original except that there isn't an embossed ring round the window like there is on the original, and the marks from taking off the drilling swarf are visible inside the back. I've had sitting in my photophernalia cabinet for years a wooden spindled spool with end flanges too large a diameter to fit in a 120 camera, and I wondered what it was for. It fits the No.1 FPK perfectly. So now I know; it's a 105 spool.
      My No.1 FPK is a Model D, introduced in 1906, and almost a redesign of the original model. The camera is self erecting, but the baseboard isn't spring loaded. You have to release a catch and pull it down, and the lens panel comes with it supported by

The mahogany finished lens panel goes well   with the red bellows

a folding strut arrrangement each side. When it's in the taking position the lens panel is held commendably rigid with no sign of wobble or shake after 100 years. Why Kodak, and other manufacturers, switched from this idea to the much inferior design where the lens standard slid foward on rails and after a few years wear wobbled about I shall never know. Fitting the rails and machining the groove in the base of the lens standard can't have been any cheaper. The only advantage it gave that I can see was that you didn't need a front cell focusing lens, you moved the lens standard on the baseboard rails.
     The lens on mine is the bottom of the range fixed focus f/11 Kodak Achromatic and is in a Pocket Automat shutter giving only one speed marked I, probably about 1/50sec, plus B &T. The lever for the iris aperture is marked 1, 2, 3 and 4, which possibly correspond to f/11, f/16, f/22 and f/32. Over its life from 1906 to 1910 the Model D was available with a variety of lens and shutter combinations, some quite upmarket. A rather neat fitting is that after you push down a quite unobtrusive catch and turn the shutter the whole lens and shutter lifts out of the lens board with a bayonet fixing. The shutter on mine sticks occasionally so being able to lift it out easily should make an overhaul easier. There are two folding legs, one each side of the baseboard, to prop up the camera for time exposures in a vertical position, and a single pull-out rod just behind the base of the lens board to prop it in the horizontal position. The pivoting viewfinder at the front is a small reflecting type with the lens and mirror set in a small block of wood with a metal top secured by two small screws. This made it very easy to get inside and clean the lens and mirror which were quite dusty.
     To load a film you either slide a catch on the side of the body or push down a catch by the side of the folding struts, and the whole front of the camera slides out sideways from the back part. The

The lens panel after I let in a piece of wood where it had been split

inside, with polished natural wood surrounding a black stained film aperture, is a joy to behold. There's no pressure plate, you rely on the tension of the film to hold it flat. This is helped by two wooden bars, one each end of the film aperture just outboard of the film rollers. The bars are marked 'Slide the paper under this cross piece'.
      When it's closed the camera has a typical antique Kodak look: the wooden body and aluminium back covered in pebble-grain black leather with a minimum of brightwork, just a tiny catch to open the front, a small sliding catch to open the camera for loading, a winding key and a spool positioning button. When I got it the camera had been stored for years. The wooden lens panel was split where the finder pivots and was painted black. I stripped it and let in a piece of wood, then refinished it in a red mahogany colour. I think it looks OK, and Kodak did finish a lot of wooden lens panels in this colour. The camera was also very dirty with odd corners of the leather starting to lift, and the nickel plating inside and out was a dull grey. The brass front of the shutter was almost black. But it all cleaned up well. Now when you open it the brightwork gleams and the red leather bellows shine. I'm very pleased to have it in my collection.

I'VE GOT a soft spot for Kodak 127 size VPKs because I graduated to an Autographic lazy-tongs VPK from a humble Ensign box camera when I was a young teenager, and regarded it as my first ‘proper’ camera with adjustable stops and speeds. That very pocketable little camera went with me everywhere, including a trip to Switzerland immediately after the war, and I’m still impressed by the quality of the negatives I got. Never mind that the stops weren’t the usual f stops I’d been reading about, they were marked 1 to 4, but not the Universal System, with supposedly helpful hints by Kodak who labelled them with

The early 127 FPK with lazy tongs struts.

aids from Clouds and Marine for the smallest stop to Near View and Portrait for the largest. I soon learnt to disregard these labels, and set the stop to what I judged was about right for the light and the two shutter speeds, a hopeful 1/25 and 1/50 sec. You don’t load the film from the back, you load it from the side after undoing a catch and taking a side plate off the body. Very similar, really, to loading a bottom-loading Leica except that there aren’t any sprocket holes in the film, and no sprocket wheel for the film to catch on as it goes in. You don’t need a long leader, you just push the end of the backing paper through the slot in the take-up spool, drop the two spools in place and put the side plate back on.
     When I got the camera roll film was in very short supply. What you could get was either ex-film-studio 35mm or occasionally 120. I used to cut down 120 film in the college darkroom and rewind it into used 127 backing paper. Development was usually in a metol-hyroquionone developer buffered with sodium sulphite, near enough to Ilford’s ID11 or Kodak’s D76. Encouraged by the chemistry tutor, I made this up from chemicals in the college chemistry laboratory to a formula published by Ilford.
     That little VPK taught me more about basic photography than any other camera I’ve owned. I tried adapting it with modified spools and a cardboard

The very basic Model B reverted  to a drop front with rails and a   pull-out lens  standard.

mask to take 35mm, but without a lot of success. Much more successful was the folding sheet metal frame finder I made by copying one on a friend’s Voigtländer and screwed to the body to use in place of the tiny little reflecting finder at the front.
     Over the years I had several VPKs including drop-down baseboard models but always traded then in when I changed cameras. So when a few years ago I saw a VPK identical to my first one except that it was made by Kodak in Canada, I bought it as much for nostalgia as anything else.
     Like my first VPK it’s got ‘Japan Crystal” crackle black finish which Kodak introduced in 1920, and the last patent date listed on the back is 1921. The model went out of production in 1926, so that dates it reasonably accurately. It’s in better condition than my original VPK, unmarked except for slight rubbing through to the brass on the Autographic door. The Kodak Ball Bearing shutter, like many that I’ve come across, still works perfectly.
     I’ve got three more Autographic VPKs. The first is almost identical to the Canadian one except that it’s finished in plain black enamel. The second I found in a junk box at a camera fair. One of the rivets is missing from the lazytongs and one of the arms is bent, which makes it awkward to open and close and, unusually in my experience, the Ball Bearing shutter is jammed. I regarded it as a suitable case for treatment, gave a minimum amount for it and put it in my ‘things to do’ box. Fairly recently in another junk box I found an identical model with good lazytong struts and a working shutter but missing its side loading door. The two together cost less than a pound so now I can make one good cheap vintage VPK from the two.
     The other is a drop-down baseboard Model B, the bottom end of the 127 VPK range with the imitation leather-look finish which, in the UK, Kodak called ‘iridescent’. This has a simple T & I (Time & Instantaneous) shutter with four Waterhouse-type stops, labelled 1 to 4, in a rotary plate which you turn from the side of the shutter.

OVER the years Kodak made quite a few variations of 6x9 No 2 folding Autographic Brownies. I've got two of the models, one with square ends to the body, made from 1915 to 1917,

1915 to 1917 model

and one with rounded ends made

1917-1919 model

from 1917 to 1919. Apart from that they appear to be the same.
     Folding Brownies have a simpler specification than their non-Brownie brothers, and the number in the name doesn't necessarily signify that they took the same size film. Both of these take 120 film. The baseboard drops down after you lift a lever which also serves as a steady foot when the camera's in the upright position. The lens is a simple achromatic set behind the diaphragm and shutter which gives the camera rather an empty eye-socket look but which gave a natural lens hood and protected the lens from 'cleaning' with a dirty handkerchief.
      The shutter is the ubiquitous Kodak Ball Bearing model, but with only two speeds, 1/25 and 1/50 sec plus B&T. The aperture scale is marked 1, 2, 3 and 4 which doesn't agree with any system I've come across, certainly not the Universal System where No.1 indicates f/4. The achromatic lens probably has a maximum aperture of f/11 at the most, so maybe the numbers are a system of Kodak's own. There is also a series of helpful little legends on the aperture scale ranging from the smallest aperture for Clouds and Marine to Near View and Portrait for the largest. On the one with rounded ends, the focusing scale on the baseboard has a fixed stop marked FIXED, which is presumably the hyperfocal distance, or you can move the lens standard about a sixteenth of an inch forwards or backwards from this to positions marked 8 feet or 100 feet, with their equivalent metres also marked. The earlier square ended one has just two positions, one marked 8 feet and one marked 100 feet, with their equivalents in metres.
     To load or unload the cameras you move a sliding catch below the drop-down front and, all the 'works' of the camera lift away for you to load the film flat in the back of the body shell, or take out a fully wound-on spool.

THIS is a fairly simple specification folder made in the UK from 1933 to 1940.

Made in the UK from 1933 to 1940.

It gives eight pictures 6x9cm on 620 film, and was probably designed by Hugo Nagel, the brother of August Nagel who designed the Retina. Hugo Nagel went from Germany to join Kodak Ltd and set up a design department at Kodak's factory in Harrow, north London, in 1932. He was responsible for most of the UK designed Kodaks from 1932 till 1940. It is a self erecting camera, but not by pushing a button on the body. You open the front panel by opening a lever which also serves as a steady foot. The front self-erects as you pull the baseboard down, and locks rigidly and firmly in the taking position. To close the camera you push down a button on the front of the baseboard and close it. The back opens for loading and unloading after lifting a catch very similar to those on the Retinas. There's a small reflecting viewfinder at the front and a folding sheet metal frame finder on the body.
     The lens is a 100mm f/6.3 Kodak Anastigmat front cell focusing from 3 ft to 100 ft with click stops. The 25ft mark is in red, and 1/25 sec on the shutter and f/11 on the aperture scale are set in circles so that the three settings give the average exposure on a sunny day with the speed of film in popular use in the late 1930s, with the lens set at the hyperfocal distance. An average snapshot setting. The shutter is a three-speed (1/25, 1/50 and 1/100 sec) Kodon, also made in the UK.

EASTMAN Kodak in the US

Another UK made Brownie

stopped making folding Brownies in 1926, but Kodak Ltd in the UK revived them in 1937 a self-erecting model taking 620 film, and continued with them after the war till 1954. They gave eight pictures 6x9cm on 620 film and were self erecting, very similar to the Six-20 Kodak Junior except for the lens, shutter and viewfinder. Mine is the slightly higher specified of the two post-war models with a 100mm f/6.3 Kodak Anaston with front cell focusing set in a Kodak Dakon shutter with only two instananeous speeds, 1/25 and 1/50 sec. There's a tubular flash synch socket at the top of the shutter, but this isn't the usual co-axial design, it's a bayonet design which I haven't seen on other cameras except Kodaks made in the UK, and was probably designed to go with a Kodak bulb flashgun, though there isn't an accessory shoe. The small reflecting viewfinder at the front was finally dropped in favour of a folding optical eye-level finder on the body.