Some Shots with the Baldina

<p>Actually a Super Baldina, as it has a coupled rangefinder. Bought in a charity shop for ten pounds, with an ever ready case and lens hood. it dates from the late 1950's and has a Compur Rapid EVS shutter and Schneider Radionar f2.8 lens. One odd feature is that the lens is on an extending tube which pops out when you press the button to on the front, saving all of half an inch of depth at the expense of no doubt complex mechanisms.</p><div></div>

<p>The camera is advertised in the 1955 Wallace Heaton Blue Book as being convertible from Baldina to Super at a cost of eight guineas. To this end I believe the top can be removed complete just by unscrewing the winding handle knob and strap lugs. I daren't try this out however. Here is the page, showing a slightly earlier version than mine, with non EVS shutter and different positions for the strap lugs and flash socket.</p><div></div>

<p>In use it's a bit of a mixture, the rangefinder is bright and clear and focussing lever smooth, but setting the exposure value is a bit of a fiddle. It kept jamming as I tried to load the 200 ISO print film, but I eventually got it going and took a few shots.</p><div></div>

<p>Lutterworth is around 12 miles South of Leicester, and claims fame for the reasons shown on the sign. This is a scene in the main street.</p><div></div>

<p>It's in a very busy agricultural area, hence the tractors.</p><div></div>

<p>This establishment supplies a vital need as in most British towns and cities:</p><div></div>

<p>There are a number of pubs, probably coaching inns as it was on a Turnpike road.</p><div></div>

<p>This is a replica of the aircraft used to test the first jet engines developed by Sir Frank Whittle. It is on a major traffic island just to the South of the town.</p><div></div>

<p>Last one, a bust of Sir Frank Whittle himself.</p><div></div>

<p>Great shots there John.</p>

<p>The last two shots peeked my curiosity, and I found this interesting paper model site with a little story on Sir Whittle and the Gloster jet that carried his invention.<br>

https://www.fiddlersgreen.net/models/aircraft/Gloster-E28.html<br>

Thanks for the post.</p>

<p>I've checked and the aircraft on the roundabout is a replica of the Gloster E28-39, a prototype built to test the early jet engines. I don't want to get into the debate as to who was actually first. Sorry Alexander, your post has crossed mine, thanks for the link.<br /> One question - removing the screw to the top right of the lens reveals a rangefinder adjusting screw - does anyone know if it's for horizontal or vertical adjustment? And if horizontal, how to adjust the vertical, which on mine is off somewhat? As always, thanks for looking.</p>

<p>Interesting little camera, the Super Baldina; funnily enough, there's one coming up on our local auction and I've been considering it... I quit a non-working copy some time-ago, with the common problems with linkages for rangefinder and shutter created by the design of the rather crazy pop-out lens. I mean, why <em>did</em> they bother, for such a minimal saving in dimensions? All of about 15mm reduction in depth, as I recall. However, that Radionar lens performs very well, and it's definitely a style and era of rangefinder I find attractive. It had an exceptionally nice viewfinder, as I recall.</p>

<p>Fine pics and great colour as usual, and the inclusion of the old advertisment is always a nice touch. Thanks for another enjoyable post, John. I'll keep watching that local copy...</p>

<p>Nice presentation and pictures.</p>

<p>Balda was another of those companies that had a split personality after WWII. The Eastern part went on, as East German VEB Belca-Werk, in the former factory of Balda-Werk Max Baldeweg in Dresden, while the Balda company reconstituted itself in the Federal Republic.</p>

<p>Here's one of the products of the Ossies, as presented in my bible, <em>Reiche Auswahl </em>(ca 1956), together with the cover of the manual for the Wessie camera (which, by the way is listed on Butkus's fabulous manuals site).</p>

<p>I wonder if the pop-out lens wasn't a sort of vestigial organ left over from the former bellows of the early Belticas?</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks for the comments and information about the Balda company, interesting. There are plenty of "pop-out tube" roll film camera, no doubt regarded as an alternative to bellows, for example the Braun Paxina, but I can't recall another 35mm with this feature. Here are another couple of shots.</p><div></div>

<p>These were done in Leicester. Another one (cropped at the base):</p><div></div>

<p>Last one - in this shop you can arrange your financial affairs, and then get tattooed. Thanks again.</p><div></div>

<p>I wonder where they tattoo the copy of the mortgage? (rhetorical question, by the way). Also interesting to see the rise in the display of <em>English</em> flags.</p>

<p>I was friends with this odd girl over a dozen years ago who came from Lutterworth. We called her Lolly from Lutterworth. Her real name might have been Frances.<br>

Back to your camera. Either you are very good at using fifty year old cameras or what you have appears to have a very fine lens. The exposures are spot on. The clarity, sharpness, contrast and colour are so much like any modern lens based film camera. This one is definitely a keeper! Thanks for sharing.</p>

<p>Very sharp and crisp pictures. The perspectives give the pictures almost a 3-D appearance. Thanks for posting, sp.</p>

<p>Nice series, John. Very interesting to learn there was an upgrade path to the Super. Lutterworth looks like an interesting place.</p>

<p>I have had a couple of Baldinas. Both very nice except they developed faults. One wouldn't cock the shutter when winding on and the other had a jammed wind on mechanism. I would still buy another though if one appeared at the right price.</p>

<p>I did a weekend of gigs in and around Lutterworth around 1990 organised by a local vicar who had seen us busking in Cantebury. It was around this time of year as he had arranged for the then Chancellor, Nigel Lawson to light the firework night bonfire.</p>

<p>That vicar never did pay us for the gigs!</p>

<p>Starvy: "Either you are very good at using fifty year old <a href="../classic-cameras-forum/00XZvH?start=10" target="_blank">cameras</a> or what you have appears to have a very fine lens. The exposures are spot on." I have to confess that I was using an exposure meter which reads off light value at 100 ASA, but forgot to make the correction for 200 ISO film, hence they were all at least a stop overexposed. Luckily the film latitude and scans at a local lab seem to have overcome this, although I have done levels adjustment in some cases. I also apply a low unsharp mask (60% , 0.6) after resizing to 700 pixels. But yes, it is a good lens especially at around f11.</p>

<p>Very nice photos, all.</p>

<p>John S, I was going to querry you if that was the Frank Whittle of jet engine fame and you answered my question as I scrolled down the list. I only made it to the UK once, in 1985, to visit my daughter stationed at Lakenheath AF and her husband was about five miles away at Mildenhall AB, and they bought a house in between, unusual for Yanks. </p>

<p>One of the pubs you depicted is named the Shambles. My wife and I walked around the walls surrounding York and they had a district called the Shambles. I have no idea where Lutterworth is, but is that Yorkminster on the sign?</p>

<p>My father was born in Scotland and we visited Bothwell, his birthplace, and loved Edinburgh. We have had Old English Sheepdogs in our home for nearly 30 years, and the UK seemed to be wall-to-wall sheep, but when you say sheepdog in the UK, it means border collie.</p>

<p>When I was spending my year in Vietnam, I took my R&R in Hong Kong in March 1967. Flying into the airport just at sundown was a beautiful sight. While waiting for the plane in Saigon, I noticed a fellow captain and weather officer from another unit also waiting, and I suggested that we join up and share a hotel room to save money, and so it was. One evening, for some strange reason, we went to a NAAFI, which is kind of a Brit officers/enlisted club, and a bunch of Brits from Dorsetshire joined us and regaled us with their combat adventures in Malaysia and their utter respect for the fearless Gurkhas, of which there was a regiment in Hong Kong. The Dorsets were utterly astonished that I was hanging out with my friend, who is African-American. This was a period of riots in US cities. Afterward, I asked the Brits to take me to their favorite restaurant for fish and chips, which they did, and I ate two back-to-back orders. Delicious and unknown in Vietnam.</p>

<p>James, what a nice story. "The Shambles" is in York, but there are a number of other places in the UK with the same name. It seems to signify an area where butchers and meat stalls put out their wares, although most of them are now gone. The Lutterworth pub may be named after this practice, sadly a lot of the old pub names have been changed over the years.<br>

The church on the sign is the local town church, not York Minster! Lutterworth is in Leicestershire in the English Midlands, around 150 miles South of York. The reason I've visited it a number of times recently is that my son is working at the nearby Magna Park, a large distribution depot nearby coincidentally on the site of the former Bitteswell RAF airfield.</p>

<p>Very nice photos and enjoyable series. Thanks for sharing John.</p>