I actually quite enjoy the Ektra, though, as a designer, the shortcomings are very frustrating. I own 3 of the cameras, 2 of which still work, and all of the lenses and most of the accessories. I am not sure whether the shutter fails because the advance mechanism is so flimsy, or just fails. I have a repair manual and had intended to get the broken one working, but I need to make special tools, so it will have to wait for retirement and the completion of my wife's list of requirements after that...
cheers, Frank On 24 Oct, 2009, at 23:18, CarlosMFreaza wrote:
The Kodak Ektra was a very serious Kodak attempt to build a 35mm camera provided with the highest quality and more advanced features in the market from 1941, in fact several of them were unique for 35mm and Leica and Contax cameras never had them. It was the 1st RF to have a parallax compensated finder, it had lens coating on all lenses from 1941, this was a soft coating and then it was applied on the lenses inner surfaces, it was a hard coating after the war, it also was the 1st 35 RF with interchangeable backs, each back was a complete film system and then you could change backs at the middle of the roll, it was the 1st 35mm to offer built in zoom finder; the 1st 35 RF to offer lever advance (back mounted) and 1st 35 RF to use a film rewind lever. The Ektra had a lot of accesories like ground glass viewfinder, angle viewfinder, close-up auxiliary lenses system, etc. The Ektra had dedicated Ektar lenses,:1,9/50mm seven elements Biotar type; 3,5/50mm Tessar type; 3,3/35mm WA; 3,5/90 short tele; 3,8/135 and a rare 4,5/153mm tele. These were excellent lenses, however they had a very complicated lens mounting and the telemeter coupling mechanism was very complex too, being these items serious camera's weak points. According Stephen Gandy, "...Ektra shutters are notoriously unreliable. It probably has the dubious honor of having the most unreliable shutter ever put into a quality 35 mm. Roughly 95% of all the 2500 or so Ektra shutters stopped working decades ago. If you want to shoot one on a regular basis, find yourself a good Ektra repairman first." This is a nice page on the Ektra camera; at the page bottom there are other interesing links about Ektra cameras: http://www.pacificrimcamera.com/pp/kodak/ektra.htm Carlos 2009/10/24 FrankDernie<Frank.Dernie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:I think the optical design of the Kodak Ektra, the only quality Kodak camera with which I am familiar, is exemplary. The mechanical design is poor, it is complex and difficult to make and it has a couple of weaknesses which make it inaccurate and unreliable. The rangefinder optics look super but themechanism connecting the optics to the lens is awful. FWIW, Frank On 24 Oct, 2009, at 00:22, Richard Knoppow wrote:. The Kodak lens is reputedly excellent but the camera shares with other Kodak cameras rather poor ergonomics. Also, while the rangefinder has a long base the very small focusing window makes it difficult to use. The camera isalso nose-heavy but that may actually steady it for some people. It has always bothered me that Kodak did not make cameras of equalquality to their lenses. I think they had the means to do it but for some reason did not. They did make very good view and studio cameras and a good motion picture camera but their still cameras mostly left something to be desired. I do not include the Retina series in this, they were quite goodcameras, but it was not a product of Kodak in Rochester.--- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx- Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe'in thesubject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org- Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with'unsubscribe' in thesubject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list--- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org- Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
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