Kodak Medalist Review and Samples

[eckmanmj]

Today, I present to you my full review of the legendary Kodak Medalist from 1944.

This post is long, but I cover the delicate process of loading film and shooting with the camera. While I still recommend anyone who has one of these to read the manual, I hope that my information is a good supplement to the info thats already out there.

I love this camera. The Ektar lens's reputation as a world class lens is well deserved. Color, sharpness, contract, everything is out of this world.

I shot two rolls of film in this camera, the first was a 120 roll of Kodak Portra 160 which I re-spooled into a 620 spool, and the other was a roll of Kodachrome II 620 film which I found at a garage sale which had expired in 1983.

Here is a link to my full review along with a couple of samples:

http://www.mikeeckman.com/2015/12/kodak-medalist-1944/

These next two are from the expired roll of Kodacolor II. I had to adjust the levels and contrast in Photoshop, but I am impressed with the results.

 

[eckmanmj]

For what it's worth, these images above are resized from the original scans and do not accurately reflect the extreme sharpness of these images.

Even more impressive is that the original scans I do have were done on a flatbed scanner at 300 dpi. There is so much detail in a 6 x 9 medium format negative, that had these been scanned with a drum scanner at max resolution, the sharpness and clarity would have been off the charts!

 

[citizen99]

Thank you for your article and link to website 🙂 . I also like the Medalist very much.

 

[Moto-Uno]

One of many pics taken with my Medalist 1 on Rollei 200 slide film. Scanning works overtime trying to bring out all that's on film from one of these cameras . Peter

 

[johannielscom]

Never saw that image of a Medalist prototype before, how very interesting! Thanks for posting, I love my (second) Medalist, and won't sell it ever (again)!

There's a thread on RFF on the Medalist, that contains some spectacular images made with those cameras!

 

[Swift1]

Today, I present to you my full review of the legendary Kodak Medalist from 1944.

Has your Medalist been modified?
I see that the shutter button lock is missing.

I have a really nice 1947 Medalist II, and have used a 1945 Medalist. They are amazing cameras.

When you say your scans were done at 300dpi, does that mean the final jpg was 675x975 pixels?