Post-war Kodak Retina IIa (Typ 016)

The Kodak Retina was a quality camera for amateur photographers. About 172,000 Kodak Retina IIa cameras were made in Stuttgart-Wangen, West Germany, during 1951-1954, by Kodak AG, Eastman Kodak Company's German subsidiary. The camera is not much larger than the original Retina of 1934. 35mm film cameras were best known as miniature cameras and a pocketable size was a selling point. The list price in 1951 was $168.50 or about $1,700 in depreciated 2019 dollars. This camera was followed by the model IIc.

Front, folded.

Front, open.

Top

Bottom

Left

Right

Back

Film Chamber

The lens on this camera is a coated, Schneider Kreuznach Retina-Xenon, f/2.0-f/16 50 mm that close focuses to 3.5 ft. The shutter is a Deckel Synchro-Compur leaf shutter with speeds of 1/500, 1/250, 1/100, 1/50, 1/25, 1/10, 1/5, 1/2 and 1 second plus B (bulb). The shutter will synchronize with flash bulbs (M setting) and electronic flash (X setting). There is a PC flash sync socket on the shutter. The shutter release is on the top of the camera and is threaded for a cable release. The film advance lever also is on the top and is centered around the exposure counter. The exposure counter is manually set to the number of exposures on the roll and counts down to 1 as the film is advanced. The film advance locks when the counter reaches 1. The rewind knob is on the top and has a film reminder, marked for some Kodak films, in the center.