Friday, November 18, 2011

Petri 2.8 Color Corrected Super

Having visited a flea market recently, I was fortunate enough to come upon a Petri 2.8 Color Corrected Super. The Petri 2.8 was manufactured Kuribayashi Camera Industry, Inc. in Japan from 1958-61.



It features an Orikkor 45mm f/2.8 lens, with an amber coating; mine also features some sort of oil or dried fluid on one or more of the interior elements (below), but this is not courtesy of the manufacturer. The aperture opens from f/2.8-22, with ten aperture blades. Somehow the camera I bought still has what appears to be the original lens cap, thanks in large part to the leather Petri carry case the camera was in.


The camera also sports a leaf shutter with a max shutter speed of 1/300s; in my copy, the shutter begins to drag a bit from 1/2s-1s, but faster shutter speeds appear to increase incrementally and sound about right.



I have read that the rangefinder on the camera is coupled and provides brightlines for parallax correction, but I can't verify that as of yet. Until the viewfinder (below) receives the attention of some cleaning agents, it has all the utility of glasses on a blind man.


 I've found some disassembly instructions and suggestions, so hopefully, I will be able to clean both the viewfinder and lens and restore this camera to some real functionality. Either way, you'll likely see the results in the not-too-distant future.

But before cleaning the Petri, I wanted to see what it could do in it's present state. All of the below photos were taken at the Cardiff Cemetery in Cardiff, Alabama.






While there's certainly room for improvement, I can't say I was disappointed. In all of these the aperture was set at either f/8 or f/11. I wanted to give myself a large margin of error while I got accustomed to the scale focusing. Those scenes were shot on Kodak Gold 200; with manual exposure, I thought I might need plenty of exposure latitude as well; looks like I did alright.

Please feel free to leave any comments or questions you might have. I strive to make this as informative as possible.

3 comments:

  1. Hi I have just been given my father's Petri camera, the same as yours. I am delighted as it has come in it's original case and has a heap of other lenses and flash bits with it. I know nothing about camera's so shall have fun exploring with it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi. Great post!
    I'm looking for some details about how to remove and disassemble the 45mm f/2.8 lens with the Carperu shutter. Not having much luck finding detailed parts diagrams or instrux. Any place you can point me?

    ReplyDelete
  3. You there, this is really good post here. Thanks for taking the time to post such valuable information. Quality content is what always gets the visitors coming. Fault Lines

    ReplyDelete