FEBRUARY 2024 – Close-up of the exposure time ring of a Kodak Retinette 1B (Typ 045) viewfinder camera from 1965. Photo © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com
The story behind the image
In Gear Talk #8, I shared my experience with a used Kodak Retinette 1B viewfinder camera from 1965.
For this article I shot several photos of the camera, and here is one them – a close-up of the exposure time ring on the lens. Thanks to the large aperture of f/2.8 of my Canon Macro lens, I could focus on the 125 setting and blur the rest. You can almost feel the metallic robustness that has survived six decades by now.
The Retinette 1B (Typ 045) was sold between 1963 and 1966 as successor of type 037. One of the key features of the updated version was the faster exposure time, which supported times as fast as 1/500 sec. where the type 037 was offering just 1/300 sec.
Using the camera was really easy and you could be very fast with a bit of practice. Just select the exposure time, place your hand on the f-stop ring, look through the viewfinder, and move the f-stop ring until the exposure indicator (a moving needle at the bottom of the viewfinder) is centered. Then release the shutter.
The 1/125 sec and 1/60 sec settings were the standard settings I used for taking pictures. These worked well in most light conditions and could be shot without tripod, so it was pretty easy to get correctly exposed images. As the light conditions usually did not change significantly between images, all I had to do was adjusting the f-stop ring for the next photo. Nice.
Design ideas
The high resolution image
| Capture Date & Time | 03-FEB-2024, 14:45 |
| Location | Unterhaching, Germany |
| Camera | Canon EOS-1D Mark IV |
| Lens | Canon EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM |
| ISO | 200 |
| Exposure | 1/100 sec at f/2.8 |
| Digital Image Source Format | Canon Camera RAW (CR2) |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 4757 x 3171 Pixels |
| Copyright | © by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com |
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