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Found a box of old Kodak Retinas at a yard sale in Akron
I was driving back from a showing last Saturday and saw a sign for a yard sale. They had a whole cardboard box of old cameras for five bucks. Mostly junk, but there were three Kodak Retinas in there, a IIa, a IIIc, and a weird one I think is a IIIC. All of them had seized shutters and the usual grime. I bought the box just for the fun of it. Got them home and spent the evening just cleaning the viewfinders and checking the rangefinders. The IIIc's rangefinder patch is still bright and clear, which is a small miracle. It's nice to work on something just for the sake of it, not because someone is paying you to fix it. Anyone have a good source for those tiny shutter tension springs on the older Retinas?
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john4305mo ago
My buddy in Toledo found a whole parts camera, a Retina IIa, at a thrift store for two dollars. It had a busted lens but all the tiny springs were still good. He used one to fix his own shutter, and patricia167 is right about the model names, that helped him figure out what would fit. He still has the rest of that donor camera in a drawer somewhere.
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patricia1676mo ago
That's a great find for five dollars. You mentioned the IIIc having a clear rangefinder patch, which is lucky. The model you called a IIIC is probably just the IIIc. Kodak used a lowercase 'c' for that model. The uppercase 'C' version was a later, different camera. For those shutter springs, you might have some luck on eBay if you search for "Retina shutter repair parts." Sellers often part out broken cameras.
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hugow306mo ago
My Retina IIc had the same stuck shutter last year. I found a guy in Oregon who sells little kits of common repair parts for old Kodaks. He had the exact spring I needed for about eight bucks. Let me see if I can find his website again, it was something like classiccameraparts.
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