Graflex Century Graphic (1947-1970)

The Graflex Century Graphic is a miniature press camera that was made by Graflex Inc. in Rochester, New York, from 1947 to 1970. Press cameras were made to meet the needs of newspaper photographers and are of robust construction.

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The Century folds into a fairly compact package. The photographer presses a hidden button on the top of the camera to release the lens bed and opens it until it locked into place. He then draws out the lens standard until it hits the infinity stops on the rails and locks it into place. The camera has limited movements on the front: rise, shift and tilt, and the bed can be dropped. The drop bed and front rise are useful to get the front of the lens bed out of the picture with wide angle lenses. The shifts are available only with lenses that have focal lengths longer than normal because otherwise the front lens standard hits the lens bed struts.

The camera has an open frame viewfinder and could come with an optional optical viewfinder. Focusing is by ground glass with the camera on a tripod, by the focusing scale located on the lens bed or by an optional Kalart coupled range finder.

The Century could be customized with a variety of lenses and shutters. This example has an f/4.5 103mm Graflex Trioptar lens made by Wollensak in a Graflex Century shutter also made by Wollensak. This was the lowest price combination. Better lenses and shutters made by Eastman Kodak Company also were available, for example the f/4.5 101mm Kodak Ektar in a Kodak Flash Supermatic shutter. Other lenses by manufacturers such as Zeiss or Schneider, and shutters such as the Compur Rapid were imported from Germany. The size of the lens board and the length of the bellows draw limit the diameter and focal length of the lenses that can be used. The focusing scales on the lens bed need to be matched to the lens for scale focusing to work. The Kalart rangefinder also needs to be adjusted to match the lens. Ground glass focusing works with any lens without any further adjustments.

A Century Graphic came with a removable ground glass back for 2-1/4" x 3-1/4" sheet film in holders, two sheets to a holder, and had a Graflok back for the optional roll film holders. The "23" roll film holder is for eight 2-1/4" x 3-1/4" pictures on 120 film. A "22" roll film holder for twelve 2-1/4" square pictures on 120 film also was available. The roll film holders had dark slides, which allowed the film holders to be removed mid-roll without wasting a picture. If you don't want to handle individual sheets of film in a darkroom, a roll film holder is desirable.

You needed to have the camera on a tripod to use ground glass focusing. You opened the shutter, focused and composed the picture on the ground glass as in a view camera, closed the shutter, set the taking aperture and shutter speed, inserted the loaded sheet film holder, pulled out the dark slide on the sheet film holder, exposed the film, replaced the dark slide and took the exposed film to the darkroom in the holder. Hand-holding the camera, you would focus using the distance scale on the lens bed or the Kalart range finder and compose the picture using the open frame finder or the optical finder. Using the roll film holder is like using any other roll film camera. When you use the roll film holder it puts your eye a little farther from the optical finder than when you use  the ground glass back.

This camera attracts attention when out in public. Unfortunately the bellows on my 70 year old example has developed a light leak and it is out of commission right now. I have a replacement bellows and just need to get around to putting in the new one. The half-silvered glass beam splitter on the rangefinder has tarnished and the focusing patch is only faintly reflected. Deteriorated beam splitters are common.  Replacing the beam splitter is possible, but requires cutting a replacement to fit.

A gnarly tree in Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee, pre-light leak.

Advertisement, Popular Photography, April, 1950.

Kodak VR35 K12 (1986-1989)

Eastman Kodak Company stopped making 35 mm cameras in 1969 owing to the phenomenal success of the cartridge loading Instamatic cameras. The popularity of cartridge loading cameras gradually declined as compact point-and-shoot cameras with autofocus and automatic film loading became available.  Kodak re-introduced a new line of point-and-shoot 35 mm cameras in 1986 and discontinued the last of the Instamatic cameras in 1988. This camera was manufactured for Kodak by Chinon Industries. Kodak had a close relationship with Chinon and eventually bought the company in 2004.

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The K12 has a plastic body with a flip up flash. The lens is a four element, f/2.8 35 mm Kodak Ektar lens with an aspherical lens element that was made by Eastman in Rochester, NY. The shutter is electronically timed from 1/8 to 1/500 second. The film is advanced automatically after each picture and rewinds automatically at the end of the roll. Flipping up the flash uncovers the lens and turns on the camera. Auto focusing is by an infrared sensor through two "eyes" next to the lens. Exposure is programmed auto exposure. Film speed is set to ASA 100, 200, 400 or 1000 by the DX code on the film cassette. Operation is almost completely automatic. This is a camera in the tradition of the first Kodak of 100 years earlier - "You press the button and we do the rest." The controls are the shutter button, a self-timer switch, a switch for fill flash in daylight, and a switch to rewind the film mid-roll. The flash fires automatically in low light. The camera takes a now-discontinued size 323, 9V lithium battery. A 9V transistor radio battery will power the camera, but runs down pretty quickly. The use of a transistor radio battery was anticipated by Kodak because the battery compartment has contacts for the transistor radio and a sticker to show the right way to put it in. The list price was an expensive $200 in 1986. It was discontinued in 1989. They are cheap today. The K12 was the second best of the VR35s. The top of the line K14 "Medalist" was similar, but had in addition a data back to imprint the date on the negative, and a switch to turn off the flash. The bottom of the line VR35 K2 had a hot shoe for flash, a fixed focus, fixed aperture lens, a single shutter speed, and manual film advance and rewind.

The VR35 name ties in with the Kodak VR-G film that came out about the same time. VR technology is still used in current Kodak film.

Ricoh KR-10M (1990)

My sister-in-law gave me this Ricoh KR-10M camera that once belonged to her late father. Unfortunately the camera had been dropped on its nose at some point and the Vivitar 70-210 mm zoom lens that was on it was broken. The camera apparently survived the fall otherwise intact, so I replaced the broken Vivitar with a Ricoh f/2 50 mm lens from eBay.

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The KR-10M has a plastic body with a metal lens mount. It takes four AA batteries and has motorized film advance and rewind. The lens mount is a Pentax K-mount bayonet. Pentax licensed the K-mount to numerous manufacturers, making a wide variety of K-mount lenses readily available. Pentax screw mount lenses also work with an adapter. There are control buttons (shutter release, self-timer, mode, up and down setting selections) and an LCD status display (battery indicator, shutter speed, exposure counter, film advance indicator, film loaded indicator, multiple exposure mode indicator, continuous photography mode indicator) on the top.  The back of the camera has a film ID window, the film rewind button, and a socket for the shutter remote.  The front has the release button for the lens, the auto exposure lock button and the flashing LED for the self timer.  The bottom has a tripod socket.

The camera has through-the-lens metering with either manual exposure or aperture priority auto exposure. It also has auto-bracketing auto exposure to allow you to take three pictures, one at the metered exposure, one with 1/2-stop more exposure, and one with 1/2-stop less exposure. Film speed is automatically set by the DX code on the film cassette. The film speed defaults to ISO 100 for a non-DX coded cassette. An exposure compensation setting allows you to manually change the rated film speed by +/- 4 stops.  With a non-DX coded cassette you can set the film speed from ISO 6 (increase exposure 4 stops from ISO 100) to 1600 (decrease exposure 4 stops from ISO 100).  The camera will read the number of exposures on a DX coded cassette and automatically rewind the film once the rated number of exposures have been made.  On a non-DX coded cassette the camera just stops when it reaches the end of a roll.  You have to rewind the film manually by using a pen to press the recessed film rewind button.  You also can rewind any film in the middle of a roll.  The camera leaves the tip of the film leader sticking out, which is handy when you reload the film later to finish the roll.

The shutter is vertically running and electronically timed. The shutter speed in auto exposure mode varies from 1/2000 second to 32 seconds. In manual mode you can set the shutter speed from 1/2000 to 16 seconds.  Flash sync speed is 1/60 second set manually with a non-dedicated flash unit or 1/100 second set automatically with a Ricoh dedicated flash unit.  The frame rate is three pictures per second with the camera set for continuous photography.

The viewfinder has a diagonal split-image focusing aid and displays the shutter speed at the bottom of the viewfinder.  

The original list price for the camera and an f/2 50mm lens was $376 in 1990.  In 1992 Popular Photography reported that the street price was about $200. The KR-10M was considered an entry level SLR.

Ricoh began in 1937 as  Riken Kogaku Kogyo K.K. (Riken Optical Industries Co., Ltd.)  It was a spin-off from Riken (Institute of Physical and Chemical Research). Riken Optical Industries changed its name to Ricoh in 1963.  Ricoh acquired Pentax in 2011, and still makes digital cameras under the Pentax name.

Push button control is not my favorite way to set a camera.  Using the exposure compensation control to set the ISO for a non-DX coded cassette is awkward because the exposure compensation setting reverts to zero whenever the camera is turned off. The fact that the camera uses AA batteries instead of an expensive lithium battery is a positive feature.

RCA Logo, RCA Studio B, Nashville, Tennessee

Argus Golden Shield C3 (1960-1961)

The Golden Shield C3 was a variation on the Argus Match-Matic C3 (see the post for July 12, 2018), the main difference being the silvery front and rear panels instead of the tan and black panels of the Match-Matic.

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The Golden Shield Corporation, Great Neck, NY, was formed in 1959 to distribute under its own name consumer products such as radios, phonographs and television sets that were made by other companies. One of Golden Shield's owners and suppliers was Sylvania Electric and its Argus subsidiary (Argus Cameras had become part of Sylvania in 1958). Only about 3,000 Golden Shield Arguses were made.

Minox B (1958-1968)

Minox B

The Minox was advertised as a go anywhere pocket camera, but the small size and the ability to focus as close as 8 inches also made the camera famous as a spy camera. The Minox B was the most popular sub-miniature Minox. About 380,000 were made from 1958 to 1968 in West Germany. This little Minox B was made in 1964.

The camera has an aluminum body with a scale focusing f/3.5 15mm Complan lens and a shutter running from 1/1000 to 1/2 second plus B (bulb) and T (time). There is an unlabeled dot between 2 and B on the shutter speed dial, but that appears to set the shutter at 1/2, too. You open and close the camera using a sliding action that cocks the shutter and advances the film. The negative is a tiny 11 mm wide by 8 mm high.

The built-in selenium cell light meter can be set for film speeds from 25 to 400 ASA. The light meter is coupled to the shutter speed setting. For correct exposure you match the shutter speed to the meter reading by lining up the triangle on the scale with the needle on the meter. For exposure control a built-in neutral density filter with a 10x filter factor can slide over the lens. The camera automatically adjusts the light meter for this filter setting and allows you to take pictures in yt?bright sunlight with fast film. For exposure or contrast control with black and white film, a built-in green filter with a filter factor of 2 can slide over the lens. To set the shutter speed with the green filter in place you match the dot on the light meter scale to the needle.

Minox also made appropriately small accessories for the Minox camera, including a daylight film developing tank, a tripod adapter, a flash attachment, etc.

Blue Moon Camera and Machine, Portland, Oregon, still loads film into Minox cartridges. You can get Minox film directly from Blue Moon or from the Film Photography Project store and other retailers.

Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville, Tennessee, in 2016.

Post-war Kodak Retina II (Type 011)

This Kodak Retina II was part of the revival of West German camera manufacturing from the devastation of the Second World War. Eastman Kodak Company had lost control of its German subsidiary, Kodak AG, because of the war and acted quickly to recover its investment after the war. The film factory was unavailable because it was in the Russian Zone. The camera factory was in the American Zone and therefore was in a better position to be restarted, although the plant had been converted to make fuzes for anti-aircraft projectiles and had damage from USAAF bombing raids. Production of new Retina cameras started in late 1945.

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My camera was made for the U S Army PX system in late 1947. It has a Kodak Ektar f/2 47 mm lens made by Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, New York. The lens has a serial number of EO7592, which indicates that the lens was made in 1946 (E = 4 and O = 6), and it has the circled "L" symbol that indicates it has anti-reflection coatings. Kodak had produced the same lens for the Kardon camera that was made by the Precision Instrument Co., New York, for the US Army Signal Corps. The shutter is a Deckel Compur Rapid shutter that is not synchronized for flash. It has a serial number 6166592, which indicates that the shutter was made in 1947. The body has a serial number of 114031. Shutter speeds run from 1 second to 1/500 second in the old shutter speed sequence of 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/250 and 1/500, and the shutter has a B (bulb) setting. The shutter speeds run slow on my camera. I need to send it for service before I use it.

The camera has a knob wind and rewind. The shutter release plunger and the cable release socket are located on the body. You use a lever on the lens to cock the shutter because it is not cocked by winding the film. The exposure counter is manually reset to 1 and counts up. The top deck has an accessory shoe. I can slip a shoe mount light meter into mine. The rewind knob pulls up to make it a little easier to rewind the film. The rewind-advance selection lever is on the back of the camera.

The post-war Retina II resembles the pre-war Retina IIa, which was not sold in the USA.

Ansco Memo (1928)

The Ansco Memo was a single frame (what nowadays is called a half-frame) 35 mm camera made in Binghampton, New York. It was one of the first American-made 35 mm cameras.

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The body on my camera is wood with leather covering. Other versions of the Memo were polished wood and there was a Boy Scout version in khaki paint. The lens is a fixed focus f/6.3 Wollensak Velostigmat lens in a self-setting shutter. It wasn't marked with a focal length. Aperture settings were marked f/6.3, 8, 11 and 16. Shutter speeds were 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, B (bulb) and T (time). There wasn't any provision for a cable release. The film load was a strip of perforated 35 mm film, the same film used in a motion picture camera, in a metal container. The film would be threaded into an identical take-up container, and advanced by moving a slide on the back of the camera. The slide had two claws that engaged the perforations on the film, the same way film was advanced in a motion picture camera. This system was used in the later Agfa Memo in 1939. The exposure counter had to be manually reset after loading film and counted up to 50. It was actuated by the shutter, not by the film advance mechanism.

The Memo came in versions with a fixed focus f/6.3 lens, a focusing f/6.3 lens or a focusing f/3.5 lens. Ansco also sold a film strip projector, an enlarger and other gadgets for the Memo. Production ended during the Depression. The price of a Memo was about $25, or roughly $400 in today's depreciated dollars.