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This is a Kodak Retina Reflex Type 025, Kodak's first SLR, made at Kodak's factory in Stuttgart, Germany in late 1957 or 1958. Yes, Kodak really did once make high-end cameras! The Reflex was an SLR follow-on to the Retina folders that they had been making since 1934.

In those days the major West German SLRs had leaf shutters. With the Retina Reflex you could change the front part of the lens for different focal lengths, while the rear part and the shutter stayed on the body. Only a small part of the lens got changed, severely limiting the freedom lens designers had to introduce new focal lengths, as you can see from this photo:

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The leaf-shutter West German Zeiss Ikon Contaflex was first introduced a few years before the Retina Reflex, but not yet with interchangeable lenses. Kodak apparently rushed the first Retina Reflex to market to beat Zeiss with interchangeable lenses, judging by the Modern Photography review, which follows. The Reflex was a modification to the Retina rangefinder, and even took the same lenses.

(See below for the earlier review based on the original German introduction.)

Leaf shutters were more reliable than focal-plane shutters, for the West German makers, anyway, and opened fully at any speed, so they synchronized with flash at any speed, even electronic flash. Focal-plane shutters opened all the way only at lower speeds; at higher speeds the rear curtain starts moving across the film before the front curtain has finished. The problem with that is that when the flash fires some of the film is still covered.

But, from a system point of view, a focal-plane shutter is a better choice because you really want to change the whole lens, not just the front elements. You don't want to pay for a shutter with each lens, either. Perhaps most importantly, as cameras advanced and the shutter began to be integrated into the exposure-metering system, it became increasingly complicated to interface the camera body to a leaf shutter in the lens.

An in-between choice, used on later Retina Reflexes, was to put the leaf shutter behind the lens. That way each lens didn't have to have its own shutter, but the the design still limited how far the lens could extend into the body.

Leaf shutters added complexity because, since the shutter was between the lens and the mirror, it had to be open for viewing and focusing. When the shutter was pressed, the leaf shutter had to be closed before the mirror went up and, usually, a baffle opened, or else the film would be fogged. Then, once the mirror was out of the way, the shutter opened and closed to make the exposure. Winding the film (no quick return mirror) brought the mirror back down, closed the baffle, and opened the shutter. By contrast, focal-plane shutters were behind the mirror and therefore didn't interfere with viewing.

So, while leaf shutters may have been a good technical choice in 1957 for the West German makers, who weren't afraid of complex mechanics, they were a long-term dead end. Zeiss Ikon introduced the focal-plane-shutter Contarex in 1958, but by then it was too late to catch the Japanese. Kodak never did make a focal-plane-shutter SLR, and stopped making 35mm SLRs altogether in 1968. The last Reflex, for 126 film, ended production in 1974.

Here's the first Kodak ad, which appeared in July 1958 Modern Photography:

Here are some more photos of my Retina Reflex. Note the embossed name on the back.

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Here's that initial review from the December 1957 issue of Modern Photography:

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