The Retina 1B – c1957 Review

Although Eastman Kodak made their name as a supplier of the camera to the masses with the famous Vest Pocket Kodaks, as time went on, the com pany diversified until it was the world’s major producer of almost all forms of photographic supplies. In the early 1930s, Eastman set out to diversify further by buying in the expertise of a major German camera manufacturer. The company that finally fell into the Kodak fold was Nagel Camerawerk of Stuttgart, a highly regarded manufacturer of ‘miniature’ (in other words rollfilm) cameras. Nagel’s new masters decided that what they really wanted was a thirty five millimetre camera that could compete in the new market that Leitz had created in the mid ‘twenties with the Leica. It was obvious even in 1932, when Kodak bought Nagel, that 35mm was the wave of the future and Kodak were determined to be up there on the crest. Ulterior Motives. Kodak had a special reason for wanting a high quality camera with their name on it – the daylight loading cassette.