Old Good Light: Kodak Signet 35

Kodak Signet 35
(I know, I'll make a decent picture ASAP)

This is a very nice small camera made by Kodak, USA, in the '50s. The lens is a super sharp 44mm F3.5 Ektar, a Tessar based design, with diaphragm setting from f3.5 to f22. To be honest the Ektar lens sharpness is as good as the Rollei 35 Tessar if not better!

At the top plate, there are the film advance and rewind knobs and the frame counter. The counter is, like many Kodaks from this era, a regressive counter. You need to set it manually according to the film number of exposures. For example, for a 12 exposure film, you set the counter to 12. It will decrease by one for each frame shot. I really don't like regressive mechanical counters because it's very easy to forget to set it properly in the beginning.

The viewfinder is small and not very bright, has no parallax compensation neither framing lines, but at least has a decent coincident image rangefinder and good contrast. The rangefinder itself is precise, contrasty and very smooth. Even more impressive is the fact it's still perfect after more than 60 years!

The shutter is very simple with just the "high" speeds: 1/25s, 1/50s, 1/100s and 1/300s plus B. This camera is really built like a tank. It's solid, very solid. For what I saw during the CLA this simple shutter mechanism looks very reliable. It's normal for old shutters to get sticky but it's not that complicated to put them back to work. If your camera's shutter still sticks my advice is to have the x-sync contact removed.

It's very easy to CLA. The complete shutter and optics assembly can be removed just unscrewing (with the help of a spanner) the module screw from inside the camera. It will come out in one piece.
To remove the front lens group just grab it and turn it counterclockwise and unscrew it. It's easy to remove the front plate and get access to the shutter components.

Kodak Signet lens: Ektar 44mm f3.5

You'll also note that this camera has no light meter, but an interesting slide rule for exposure calculation on the camera back. Too bad it's not marked with ISO/ASA values, but by old Kodak film types (Kodachrome, Plus-X, XX and Pan-X). I have no idea of the original specs of the mentioned Kodachrome. Plus-X was an excellent 125 ISO low grain film and the XX was a "high speed" ISO 200 black and white film. Not sure if this Pan-X meant the Panatomic-X ultra-low grain (32 ISO). To be honest, thank's Kodak for NOT putting selenium a meter on it.

Kodak Signet 35 exposure calculator

The idea is to set the film type and the light conditions and get an exposure value. A bit clumsy but better than nothing. I would carry a handheld light meter or even a cell phone app for this function.

The only quirk is the fact that the shutter needs to be manually cocked before each picture, but at least it has a double exposure prevention lock that works very well. If you want to make a double exposure, there is a manual override for this, by moving a small lever at the bottom of the camera front. Easy to forget to cock, but far more reliable than the dreaded Kodak Retinas mechanisms.

Kodak Signet 35 back

There are two military versions, a black one (USAF) and a green one (US ARMY). Both are highly prized and can reach more than USD 500 easy if in good condition. The standard model is easily found on e-Bay for just a few bucks and worths every cent.

I got mine for $25 in a so-so condition but working. I had to clean the objective and also did an ultrasonic cleaning of the shutter assembly and a basic CLA. The rangefinder assembly needed just some minor cleaning.

Final note:

The Retinas are some sort of cult cameras, they have excellent optics but they are very unreliable. They're hard to find working well and a bit overpriced.

This Signet is just the opposite: Simple, reliable, basic and cheap, but with a superb lens.