Kodak Signet35 Camera
A well made American 35mm Camera launched in 1951(-1958). There was a Kodak35RF as a Kodak American made before. The Signet35 seems to be as an succession of Kodak35RF. The high class 4 element lens of Kodak made was named Ektar at present and became much popular lens in sharpness and good color descriptions. The Ektar lens was well known those days as a standard lens of Speed graphic.
The Ektar lens of Signet35 is 44mm F3.5 equipped in Kodak Synchro 300 shutter with Kodak Sync-terminal and its speeds are B,1/25 - 1/300sec same as a Kodak35RF's. The minimum aperture is F22. The shutter is not body release yet. The closed focus is 2 feet and this is enough close distances for this kind of cameras, but has no parallax compensation. The body was changed to light metal from plastics.
It has an exposure scale on its back as you see on the photo. This is very convenient even now and we could get a correct value of exposure without the meter. The film sensitivity on the scale are KodaChrome(25),Pan-X(50),Plus-X(100) and Super-XX(200).
You see an advertisement of Kodak Signet35, its interesting.
On the same age, there was more smaller camera called Flash Bantam which was used 828 film.
The age discrimination of Kodak Lenses
The first two letters of lens number means for the age of lens manufactured as below table. The two digits(figures) corresponded to two letters by the table stands for the lower digit of the age(19xx).
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | A | M | E | R | O | S | I | T | Y |
i.e As the lens number of this Kodak Ektar 44mm F3.5 is RE 1233, We will see 54 corresponded to the RE by the table. The lens was manufactured in 1954.
A sample photo by Kodak Signet 35
Ektar 44mmF3.5 f8 1/300 Fuji G400
