Store Room Gems
Balda, Super Baldina. C1936-38.
I came across this little beastie whilst doing a little inventory for Russell in the store room, it looked a bit scruffy and dirty but caught my eye. I popped the bellows by pushing the little door release button and I cast my eyes over the set, a Meyer Gorlitz Trioplan 5cm f2.9 lens set in a Compur shutter that reached a heady 1/300th of a second. Opening the film door revealed all the working of a 35mm camera, it didn’t look bad at all, a little oxidising on the sprocket roller and film rails but otherwise cleanish.
A thorough inspection showed the lens was quite dirty but came apart easily for cleaning, from the scratches I would say it isn’t the first time but they are not too bad at all. I glued down some curly leatherette, the tiny but bright viewer cleaned up nicely and a stiff brushing of those oxidised areas brought them back to something like. The ‘Super’ in the name highlights it being the rangefinder model so again a good clean with cotton buds meant a clear site of the split focus glass, half yellow and half clear and it appeared to be close to the mark and fairly easy to see even in dull conditions. A cool little feature is the viewer tilts synced with close focus to correct parallax error!
I decided to throw in a quick test roll of expired Kodacolor 200, I forget the date but I expected some colour shift, uncoated lens probably wasn’t going to help either. Loading was straight forward, a twist on the fancy counter dial set it to 24, it counts down btw and I was off, I say off, it took 3 weeks to shoot this roll. Rain, rain, more rain, super dull and more rain, but eventually I got through it. A little odd to use, the old style bellows type cocking arm on the shutter was quite normal for me as was setting aperture with a little moving arrow. Rangefinders aren’t natural to me so I did forget a few times. Advancing means sliding a catch on the bottom which then allows a button to be pressed which in turn lets you wind the knob on the bottom for a pre-set amount. That bit always felt a little different BTW but the negs showed although some frames got close only 2 overlapped, I’ll take that for its age. Shutter release is a bar on the shutter and quite long, all very 120 folder ish but slightly awkward for hand held 35mm.
Here are a handful of images giving a fair cross section of results, not overly sharp, probably equally my kack handedness and a soft lens, rangefinger is mostly there. Bouncing around in my bag for three weeks dislodged a fair bit of dust etc. When the sun made short appearances it made for fair colour pics, the mostly dull periods not so much. I found it fun for all its awkwardness, sits in a pocket nicely and has that look. I would describe it as an interesting working collectors piece, perfect for a carry around snapshop camera.
