Hello everyone, I bought an old Kodak Retinette 1A in a fleamarket. It seems to be in working condition, although I'll only know for sure after I developed the first photos. I found a manual for a later version (or a different one, the manual is in English and the camera is from Germany) but the lense and the labeling on the lenses are very different from mine.
I was hoping maybe someone with more knowledge of photography could help me make an educated guess. I assume the part labelled with an "m" is distance in meter, but otherwise I have no clue.
in the top down picture the ring closest to the body marked 3.5 to 22 is the apature and the other is the shutter speed in fraction of sec. with B for "Bulb" ( shutter stays open as long as the release is pressed)
The lens on picture the outer ring is the apature and inner ring is the focal length, I assume in meters because you said it was from Germany.
Edi: spelling, correction on shutter speed
Correction:
...shutter speed in fractions of 1 sec.
1/30, 1/60, 1/125 etc.
Correct, fixed.
The top-down picture shows depth of field for each aperture. The black triangle points to the focus distance, and the f-stops on either side indicate the depth of field from the focus plane. Wider f-stop gives deeper depth of field. In the pictures the focus is set to 20m, and the f-stop is set to 11, so the depth of field is from infinite to 4m.
Now all you need is a light meter, unless the camera has one built in. Optionally, you can use a chart like this to set exposure, it works well-enough for B&W film, and small over or underexposures are handled during printing.
That sheet is very handy, thank you.
Manuél Exposure, PhD (Doctor of Photography)
Thanks!
Just to avoid confusion what @DarrinBrunner refered to as top-down view I refered to as lens on view. But Darrin is correct it shows depth of field.