A Small Herd of Ponies

The Kodak Pony 35mm cameras were on the market from 1950 to 1962. They are about the simplest possible adjustable cameras for 35mm film. These cameras have molded plastic bodies with removable backs for loading film. The finders are the reverse galilean type. A reverse galilean viewfinder has a negative lens at the front and a positive lens at the back to produce an image that is bright and correctly oriented, but reduced in size. All of the Pony cameras are scale-focusers. The Pony II, lower left, has a single speed shutter. The others have 4-speed shutters. Lenses are f/4.5 to f/3.5. All of the cameras are synchronized for flash. List prices were in the $30 range. Eastman Kodak Company had the inkjet printer business model for its inexpensive consumer cameras. Kodak made its money on the film, not on the camera. The Pony was the least expensive Kodak that could make a Kodachrome color slide.

Back row: Pony 135, Pony 135 model B, Pony 135 model C

Front row: Pony II, Pony IV with flash

Kodak Pony 135
Introduced: 1950
Discontinued: 1954
Lens: Kodak Anaston f/4.5-22 51mm in a collapsing lens mount.
Shutter: Kodak Flash 200 (1/25, 1/50, 1/100 and 1/200 plus bulb)
Flash connection: ASA bayonet

Kodak Pony 135 model B
Introduced: 1953
Discontinued: 1955
Lens: Kodak Anaston f/4.5-22 44mm in a collapsing lens mount.
Shutter: Kodak Flash 200
Flash connection: ASA bayonet

Kodak Pony 135 model C
Introduced: 1955
Discontinued: 1958
Lens: Kodak Anaston f/3.5-22 44mm in a rigid lens mount.
Shutter: Kodak Flash 300 (1/25, 1/50, 1/100 and 1/300 plus bulb)
Flash connection: ASA bayonet

Kodak Pony II
Introduced: 1957
Discontinued: 1962
Lens: Kodak Anastar f/3.9-22 44mm in a rigid lens mount. The aperture ring is marked only in EV numbers.
Shutter: Single speed flash (about 1/60)
Flash connection: Kodalite pin and screw

Kodak Pony IV
Introduced: 1957
Discontinued: 1961
Lens: Kodak Anastar f/3.5-22 44mm in a rigid lens mount. The aperture ring is marked in EV numbers on the top and f/stops on the bottom.
Shutter: Kodak Flash 250 (1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250 plus bulb). The shutter speed ring is marked in EV numbers on the top and fractions of a second on the bottom. Add the aperture EV to the shutter EV to get the exposure value. The Argus Match-Matic that came out in 1958 uses the same method for setting the exposure.
Flash connection: Kodalite pin and screw.

The Pony IV has a retaining ring for  Series V drop-in filters built in. The other Pony cameras use a slip-on 1-1/8 inch (28.5mm) Series V filter adapter.

The exposure value (EV) is equal to the base 2 logarithm of the square of the focal ratio times the reciprocal of the shutter speed. A focal ratio of 16 and a shutter speed of 1/125 (log2(16 x 16 x 125)) gives an EV of 15.

The Ponies, with the exception of the Pony II, are still reasonably usable. I think the single speed shutter of the Pony II is just a little too limiting. Because the shutter and aperture settings on a Pony IV are interconnected, you need to remember to set the shutter speed first. If you set the aperture first, setting the shutter speed will change the aperture.

There was a 1949 Kodak Pony 828 that took Bantam 828 film, which had eight 28mm x 40mm pictures on a 35mm wide roll. It closely resembled the first Pony 135. The Pony 828 was discontinued in 1958.

Eastman Kodak Tri-X FIlm

2019 is the 65th anniversary of the release in 35 mm size of Tri-X film, probably the most popular black and white film ever made. 

A Box of Tri-X

If you saw a black and white news photograph the chances are it was taken on Tri-X. Tri-X sheet film had first appeared in the Kodak catalog in 1940. The name Tri-X most likely came from the fact that the film followed Super-XX film, which was Kodak's previous high speed roll film. Tri-X was changed in 1960 to have a shorter development time of only 8 minutes in D-76 developer instead of 12 minutes, and the film was changed again in 2007 to have slightly finer grain and the development time reduced to 6-3/4 minutes. Tri-X is well known for its versatility. It can be pushed from its normal 400 speed to 3200 speed and still yield good pictures in poor light. Pushing film means increasing the development time to compensate for less exposure than normal. The result is a printable negative, but with increased contrast and grain.

[Update] 2019 also is the 85th anniversary of the daylight loading 35mm film cartridge. Before 1934 still cameras that took 35mm film used proprietary cassettes and photographers would reload their own cassettes. Dr. August Nagel, who ran the Kodak-Nagel camera factory in Stuttgart, Germany, designed a disposable film cartridge and also a camera to use it, the Kodak Retina. Dr. Nagel had both the German and the US patents for the daylight loading magazine (as Kodak used to call it). Eastman Kodak had the manufacturing expertise to make daylight loading magazines by the million. The Kodak film magazine also fit Leica and Zeiss cameras.  35mm in daylight loading cartridges is the most popular film size now available, although sales of all sizes of film are much smaller than they once were.