Retina I (Type 010)

Format

135

Shutter

Compur or Compur-Rapid

Metering

none

Spec Notes

The first postwar Retina, and roughly 126,000 were made. Lens options sourced: Schneider-Kreuznach Retina-Xenar 50mm f/3.5 (uncoated to 1948, coated after - recognisable by a red triangle), Kodak-Anastigmat 5cm f/3.5, Kodak-Anastigmat Ektar 5cm f/3.5, Kodak Ektar 50mm f/3.5, Rodenstock Ysar 5cm f/3.5. Shutter Compur 1-1/300 + B or Compur-Rapid 1-1/500 + B. An early/late split is documented in the focus knob shape and its infinity angle; no source calls it an Ausfuehrung. NO PRODUCTION RANGE ROW: the start year is genuinely disputed and production Start cannot hold a guess. 1945 is given by retinarescue, camerapedia (specifically November 1945) and camera-wiki's production table (month-precise, '11/1945-06/1949', with a unit count, which reads as factory-derived); 1946 is given by Wikipedia, two collector sites, and a Kodak Museum object dated 1946 - though one object's date is not a model start. The reconciliation in circulation, that production ran for the US military PX system from November 1945 and reached general sale later, rests on a SINGLE source and is not recorded as fact. The end, 1949, is not disputed. Weight reported as 440 g by one collector site; dimensions 122 x 78 x 82 mm deployed from one museum specimen. DATING: Kodak AG published no serial-to-year table, and the collector lists that exist map serial to MODEL with OVERLAPPING ranges - Retina Ia (015) and IIa (016) share two bands character-for-character, as do Retina I (013) and II (014), and a 50001-ish low block recurs across Types 018, 019/2, 028 and 029. A serial-only lookup is not merely imprecise, it is actively wrong. Where the fitted lens is Schneider-built, the LENS is datable from Schneider's own 63 published serial bands, already loaded; Rodenstock publishes none.

Rangefinder

No

Alternate Names

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