Checking Out Commercial Houston (TX 04)

Houston is one giant commercial engine. Everyone is rushing around, 18-wheeler trucks thunder along the freeways, long cargo trains rumble on the tracks, strip malls with sort-of reasonable and grotesque stores can be found every few blocks, construction cranes reach up to the sky, and there is constant traffic. 

The good side of this booming prosperity is that you can find superb restaurants and truly top-class arts and museums. For me, it was such a contrast to be in a metropolis with an expanding economy, a place where something is happening. During my recent stay in Houston, I wandered around looking for my type of photographs. There was plenty of good material!

Waiting for the tram at 07:15

The METRORail light rail (tram) is efficient and runs most of the day. You can take your bicycle. To pay, you use a pre-loaded fare card or a phone app. 

N. Fannin Street view north to Texas Medical Center - pretty crummy walking but at least there is sidewalk

 Vote for Tires, 3801 N. MacGregor Way - not sure if I would buy tires here

Dakk T-shirts, 3801 N. MacGregor Way

Secret Recipe West African cuisine, but not any more

Head west out of the downtown business district and you reach the Montrose Neighborhood.

Americana strip mall architecture at its best, 1660 Westheimer Road 

Americana signage at its aesthetic best, Westheimer Road

Westheimer Road runs east-west through Montrose. In the 1980s, this was an artsy area with galleries and alternative clubs and bars. At that time, it was the center of Houston's gay and lesbian community. Today, it is one of Houston's main cultural centers, noted for its art, food scene, and night life. 

And some Montrose galleries are seriously upscale now. In November, my wife and I visited the Catherine Couturier Gallery. At first we did not recognize the featured artists. But then, while flipping through their stacks of matted prints, we saw genuine original silver gelatin prints from Weegee, Bill Brandt, Callahan, Doisneau, and more! Prices ranged from $4000 - $10,000 each. If only I had a bit of spare cash.....

Not upscale apartment, Kyle Street, Montrose - maybe I won't rent here

TR Acupuncture Herb Clinic, 6723 Weslayan Street - they will fix anything that ails you

La Calle Tacos, 401 Grey Street

In the 1980s, Grey and West Grey were grungy. Now this district has been renovated. I need to scan some of my 1980s negatives from this area.  

Historic Niels Esperson Building (1927) and its tempietto, Travis and Walker Streets

Houston Camera Exchange museum of good stuff (digital file mobile phone)

These 2022 photographs are from Kodak Gold 200 film. I used my little Kodak Retina IIa camera with its 50mm ƒ/2 Schneider Xenon lens.

Rainy Days in Astoria (Oregon)

Columbia River from the Astoria Column (Gold 200 film, Kodak Retina IIa camera, 1/250 ƒ/8 - click to see more detail)

Astoria is a historic sea and trading port on the Oregon shore at the mouth of the Columbia River. It is a wet city because weather patterns from the North Pacific thunder in most of the winter (and often in the summer). 

The mighty Columbia is the largest volume river to enter the Pacific Ocean from the Americas. The average flow at the mouth (meaning near Astoria) is about 265,000 cubic feet/second. As an example of scale, the Mississippi River during the flood of 2011 had a flow in excess of 2 million cu ft/sec, while a large tidal inlet on the Gulf of Mexico coast (Destin, Florida) has a discharge of about 100,000 cu ft/sec. From Astoria, the estuary looks immense.

Dusk on the Columbia (Moto G5 phone file)

Freighters at anchor, Columbia River, Astoria (Gold 200 film)

Great blue heron, Columbia River (Gold 200 film, 1/50 ƒ/4)

Yes, the river dominates everything. 

Riverwalk, Astoria (1/50 ƒ/4)

The Riverwalk extends along the entire waterfront. It is a nice walk or bike ride, but a bit damp in the rain. Many of the tourist restaurants are situated on the wharf or in warehouses.

On the Riverwalk (the door is fake)

Chow time, fish and chips, Astoria Brewing Company (Moto G5 phone photo)

What do you do after a wet day walking the docks? Well, eat fish 'n chips and drink craft beer at the Astoria Brewing Company. These were some of the best fish 'n chips I have ever eaten. 

Room with a view, Astoria (Moto G5 phone file)

Road with a view (Moto G5 phone file)

Astoria has plenty of hotels and even some old-fashioned motor courts. We stayed in the heart of the city, within walking distance of coffee shops, a bakery, and restaurants.

West Marine Drive, Astoria

Kick Ass Koffee - what could be better than that?

Former cannery east of Astoria

Wouldn't you know it? The day we left, the weather cleared. So it goes. I would love to explore the old cannery, but the pier was tightly secured. At one time, thousands of workers packed fish at this and other canneries.

Most of these photographs are from Kodak Gold 200 film, taken with my Kodak Retina IIa camera with its Retina-Xenon 50mm ƒ/2 lens. This is a fully coated 6-element Gauss-type lens. I had just bought this little camera and was very pleased with its performance. 

The Menlo Post Office (Small Towns in Washington 01)

Menlo Post Office (Kodak Gold 200 film, Retina IIa camera, 50mm ƒ/2 Xenon lens)

Menlo is an unincorporated community in the Willapa Valley of Pacific County, Washington. It is on WA state route 6, which takes you to the Pacific coast from I-5 in central west Washington near Chehalis. Interesting note: the 56-mile Willapa Hills State Park Trail follows Rte 6 on the former Northern Pacific Railroad line. What an incredible ride. 

"Reach for the batter-whipped bread" (Gold 200 film)

We wanted a drink and looked in the Post Office/store. This proved to be an interesting place. I always love to visit small stores like this.

Have a seat, a soda, and some petrol

The store/Post Office had an impressive collection of snapshots of generations of high school graduates,  babies, and miscellaneous townsfolk. This must be the town archive. The post mistress said the original store burned in the 1920s, This was the "new" store - from 1924.  

The first two photographs are from my new/old 1950s Kodak Retina IIa camera on Gold 200 film. It has the right vibe for this type of subject matter, and the optical quality is excellent.

1950s Optical Excellence: Kodak Retina IIa Camera

Kodak Retina IIa, made in West Germany from 1951-1954

Background

The Kodak Retina was a highly-respected camera in the 1950s and 1960s. I never used one, but several friends said the lenses and output were excellent. So, in one of my occasional GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) episodes, I started looking on the infamous eBay (now known as ePrey). Amazingly, some bargains in film equipment are still to be found there, but you need to be patient and look at the descriptions carefully. In early March (2022) this handsome little Retina model IIa (Type 016) came from a US vendor for all of $37, including shipping. It also included a medium yellow filter and a case. $37? How is this possible?

Retina Cameras

The most famous Retinas were folding cameras. This means the lens would pivot or fold into the body to make the unit more portable. You click a button to release the front door, and it swings open and shifts the lens into position. Before WWII and through the 1950s, folders were popular because they were compact. Medium format models tended to have problems with lens alignment, but 35mm models were smaller and more rigid. Zeiss Ikon, Agfa, Voigtländer, Certo, and other companies made various models. The finest may have been Voigtländer's Vito III with its superb 50mm Ultron lens, one of the best 50s of the mid-20th century. But Kodak sold the largest number of folders.

By the mid-1950s, solid body cameras became the dominant design because the lens could be mounted more precisely and remain aligned over time. 

Kodak made these superb little Retina cameras at their Nagel-werke subsidiary in Stuttgart, Germany. For reasons that I never understood, the mighty Eastman Kodak Company was unable to successfully make higher-end 35mm cameras in the USA. They made millions of snapshooter-level cameras for casual photographers, and their large-format lenses were well-respected, but precision 35mm cameras for enthusiasts eluded them. 

Dr. August Nagel himself designed the original Retina in 1934. It held Kodak's 35mm metal film cassette, the same format that we still use today. Various Retinas of increasing sophistication followed for the next 35 years. 

The models are confusing, and a Wikipedia article and retinarescue.com list the varieties of the post-war models in more detail than I can:

1. I series. 1945-1960. Viewfinder folding cameras with ƒ/3.5 to ƒ/2 lenses.
2. II series. 1946-1958. Nagel-werke added a rangefinder to improve focussing. My IIa is in this group and has a superb 50mm ƒ/2 Schneider Xenon lens.
3. III series. 1954-1960. The most sophisticated models with both a selenium light meter and rangefinder. Most of the selenium meters have failed by now.
   • The IIIc models allowed the front optical group to be exchanged with 35mm and 80mm groups. It was clumsy but worked. 
   • The IIIC (large C) models had an improved viewfinder and also accepted the interchangeable front lens elements. 
4. S series. Rigid bodies, 1958-1966. The IIIS used interchangeable lenses with the DKL (or Deckel) mount. They needed the S series lenses with a focus cam for the rangefinder. Beautiful cameras but very complicated internally
5. Retina Reflex. 1957-1967. Totally different leaf shutter bodies. The Type 025 could use the same lens elements as the IIIc series above, while the later Reflex S used the DKL lenses. These did not successfully compete with Japanese reflex cameras in the 1960s. When working, they were excellent optically.
6. Retinette series. These were lower cost with Reomar triplet lenses. Some of there bodies were almost identical to Retina bodies. 

Retina IIa with front panel closed. The lens and shutter are protected.

Coated Schneider-Kreuznach 50mm ƒ/2 Xenon lens (6 elements), approx. 1952-1953. Filter size: 29.5mm

Shutter with range 1 sec to 1/500 sec. The distance scale is in feet for the US market.

Film guide and spools - all precision machining

My IIa has a 6-element Schneider Xenon lens, a unit focus 6-element design. Unit focus means the entire lens moves forward and back as you focus. This lens is coated, as indicated by the blue tinge and the red arrow on the label. I assume this was a post-war computation, but the early-1950s would have been before the designers used computers for lens design. Rodenstock also supplied lenses for Retinas, usually the models sold in Europe. Notice the precision labels, metalwork, and mounting of the shutter and focus scale.

The filter size is 29.5 mm screw-in. Genuine German Kodak filters are thin enough to remain mounted when the lid is closed. Why do the most modern 50mm Über-lenses for mirrorless cameras need 67 mm or even larger filters? 

More Information

You can find many reviews of Retinas on the web. They are popular with their current owners. I am surprised I do not see them in use. Of course, one rarely sees film cameras at all in use, but someone is buying them as well as film. 

Cameraquest states that the IIa is his favorite model.

Photography & Vintage Cameras also prefers the IIa to other Retina models. 

My friend, Jim Grey, loved his IIa but then let it go, which he now regrets (he will probably buy another one...). He also demonstrated the excellent optics of a IIc model. 

Mike Eckman dot com wrote a detailed review of the IIa and a summary of the Kodak company's association with its German subsidiary. He has reviewed other Retina models, as well.

Chris Sherlock in New Zealand is the reigning expert.

Photo Thinking also loves the IIa.

Random Camera wrote a good review of all German folders, with emphasis on the Retinas. He liked the IIa, too.

Photojottings described the superb and sophisticated Retina IIIC, the one with auxiliary lenses.

All My Cameras liked the II (Type 014), the predecessor to my IIa. 

Is this Retina camera any good?

Well, that is the big question, of course. How is it optically? Here are some Kodak Gold 200 photographs from a recent trip to the Pacific Northwest. Click a frame to see 1600 pixels on the long dimension. You can judge for yourself, and I welcome comments, criticisms, insults, anything.

Olympia, Washington

Port of Olympia (next to the Dancing Goats® Coffee Tasting Room!) 

Swantown Marina, Port of Olympia

Thurston County Food Bank, 220 Thurston Ave., NE, Olympia

The Food Bank serves hundreds in need in the Olympia area with food and other essentials. 

Frog Pond Grocery in the historic South Capitol area (1/250 ƒ/5.6)

Olympia is a nice little city at the south end of Puget Sound. You will see more Olympia photographs in the future. 

Southwest Washington

Driving through rural Washington, interesting photo topics popped up and said, "Photograph me."

I am in the Danger Zone, Rte. 101, Skokomish (1/250 f/8)

Fixer-upper hotel, 311 Main Street, Pe Ell, Washington (1/250 ƒ/11)

Room with a view, Park Avenue, Aberdeen (the building really is curved; 1/100 ƒ/5.6½)

Aberdeen has a wealth of delicious grunginess. It is on my return list.

Astoria, Oregon

Great blue heron, Columbia River, Astoria, Oregon

Former US Mail railroad car, Astoria, Oregon

Summary

This little Kodak Retina is a jewel of 1950s Germany precision manufacturing and optical excellence. I certainly can't complain about the lens resolution or body rigidity. Imagine the skill of the technicians who assembled these cameras on workbenches. 

On mine, the rangefinder was cloudy and a bit out of alignment. I sent it to Paul Barden in Corvallis, Oregon, for a thorough cleaning and adjustment. After seven decades, I need a cleaning and adjustment, too! Mr. Barden said the camera was in good condition, and minor fungus in the rear group cleaned off without etching the coating. The rangefinder is rather squinty and is not as brilliant or defined as one in a Leica M, but what do you expect?

The leather case was seriously stinky, but I washed it and re-glued the lining to the outer shell. It works well, although normally I am not a user of camera cases. I also fixed four "Zeiss bumps", bumps where rivets under the leather build up a blob of tarnish.

These Retinas are still somewhat inexpensive on the 'Bay. When will they become the next trendy in-thing for film photographers? Buy before the prices go up, and enjoy.

Update July 2022: The cleaned and overhauled the IIa is home. Now I need to make time to use it. Here are photographs of Houston, Texas, in November of 2022.