What Was That Camera?

Someone gave me one of these Retina cameras a couple of years ago and it is a sweetly designed and desirable little camera (although mine is the sort without rangefinder unfortunately.) Never the less I should get the darned thing out and actually use it, as photos I have seen taken with this camera / lens are very nice. I also have a nice little Voightlander Vito also without rangefinder. Its Tessar (sorry "color skopar") lens is similarly good, if very simple - having only 4 elements. Unfortunately its shutter is now stuck and I have never been tempted to pay to have it serviced (thats all it needs) as the service would still be worth more than the blasted camera. Never the less I got some great shots from it when it was still OK. And BTW, if you think a Leica M is silent to shoot - you should try one of these little leaf shuttered beauties. They leave Leica in the shade in that department!

If you doubt my word about image quality, buy a copy of the book "Collecting and Using Classic Cameras" by Ivor Matanle and look at the photos he has taken with both of these cameras. This is a great book incidentally and is well worth owning for any rangefinder or classic camera fan as he has made a career of using them himself. (He still writes for the British Amateur Photographer" magazine on this topic.) And you will also find he has written a similarly titled book on claassic SLRs.
 
Last edited:
As an aside to this thread, I met Tenzing Norgay at the Darjeeling Mountaineering Institute in India in 1976. My partner at the time and I had just wandered into the place one morning and an attendant had quietly said to us, "thats Tenzing over there". I'm not a person with a lot of front but there was no way I was going to pass up an opportunity like this so we went over and introduced ourselves and had a chat for about 10 minutes. He was just the loveliest of guys and introduced us to Nawang Gombu (I'm trying to remember back 30 years here so excuse me if I've spelt his name incorrectly) who was the first person to climb Everest twice. I remember Tenzing at one stage in our conversation saying "I haven't seen Ed for a few months but hope to catch up with him next year." Somewhere in the archives I've got several slides of me standing next to the great man. Of course both he and Sir Ed. have now passed on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom