Photographer Thomas Bloomfield made it his mission to identify and obtain the exact camera and lens used in the classic movie 'Rear Window.'
My hobby is film photography, which involves collecting interesting cameras, taking photos, printing pictures, and so on. Within this fairly common hobby though I have a particular niche interest, which is tracking down and trying out cameras that feature in film and media.
Left to right: The Kine Exakta introduced in 1936, the Kine Exakta II , the Exakta Varex , the Exakta Varex VX which is ourcamera introduced in 1951, the Exakta Varex IIA and the first big cosmetic overhaul of the Exakta, the Exakta Varex IIA version 2 , the Exakta Varex IIB , and the Exakta VX1000
It was also one of the first cameras with a quick-release bayonet mount which allowed you to swap out lenses much more quickly than with the normal screw mount. Exakta VX European version, Exakta VX American version, publicity still, arrows showing the covered nameplate on the publicity still camera In regard to actual differences, you can firstly see that just below the nameplate on the European version where it says ‘Exakta Varex’, there’s this little ‘V’ and ‘X’ , and on thecamera on the far right there’s no little ‘VX’ beneath the nameplate. You can see on the American version of the camera in the middle it’s the same as in the publicity still – the word ‘Varex’ has been removed entirely and the ‘VX’ has been pushed up onto the nameplate.
On the right of the camera are the slow speeds and self-timer knob – and to switch the camera over to slow speeds you have to first select the ‘B’ setting, and then the black numbers become your slow speed options, and the red numbers are your self-timer options.Now onto loading the camera with film.
Onto focusing screens. There were several different screens available for Exakta cameras, each one useful for different applications, and there are two examples in the above image, a split-image rangefinder-type screen on the left and plain ground glass on the right. When in the film we see James Stewart’s point of view looking through the camera we don’t see any centre spot or hairline cross, so just the plain ground glass screen is the obvious choice.
The leaflet it turns out contains an exhaustive description of all the quality checks Kilfitt does on every individual lens it sells, and where the glass plate comes in is in the final test – the photographic test – so for every lens they use a specialized camera to take a series of photos of various test patterns , and they do all these tests on two glass plates, one glass plate goes to the purchaser the other is retained by the factory.
There are all sorts of things that can go wrong with old lenses – fungus, haze, separation, and so on, but what this strange mottled pattern is is the anti-reflective coating on the lens deteriorating, and unfortunately most of the Kilfitt lenses I’ve seen have this same issue.
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