If you are a collector of cameras, or have seen a good number of vintage cameras, then the Kodak Bantam Special should be a camera whose looks, if not reputation, precede itself.
Praised for it's unique art-deco body styling, the Kodak Bantam Special was the highest end consumer camera that Eastman Kodak produced and sold in the USA at the time of its release. Imported German Retina cameras were also being sold, but the Bantam Special represented an American footstep into the high end miniature camera market, with a feature set that not even the German made Retinas could compete with.
History
The Kodak Bantam series, and importantly the history of the 828 film format begins in 1935 and was aimed to correct some of the deficiencies of the 135 film format we are familiar with today.
Kodak launched the 135 film cartridge alongside their German made Retina folding cameras in 1934. The concept of using 35mm double perforated motion picture film for still photography was not new. Leica and Contax cameras were already using it, but required photographers to reload metal cassettes from motion picture rolls in a darkroom, which limited the user base open to these cameras.
What Kodak's 135 format brought to the market was prepackaged, disposable cassettes loaded with film, which meant anyone could use cameras designed for this film, not just those who could bulk load. Their cassette system was also backwards compatible with Leica and Contax cameras, further opening up the market.
However, Kodak themselves were quick to realize that the 135 film format had issues. Firstly, the dual row of perforations, necessary for transporting the film through a movie camera or projector, were a waste of space and potential negative size in still photography. Second, the lack of backing paper necessitated a complex and costly advance and exposure counter mechanism and wasted film at the beginning of the roll when loading. Third, the long length of the 135 film cartridge (up to 36 exposures) took consumers a long time to utilize, frustrating those who wanted their photos processed sooner.
Former Kodak Limited managing director, Charles Z. Case, took up the issue, and working with the same 35mm unperforated stock, came up with what Kodak would adopt as 828 film.
Case's film utilized a metal spool and backing paper, much like 120, 620 and 127 formats then in use. The length of the film was limited to eight images, and the negative size was increased to 28x40mm. 30% larger in area than the 24x36mm negative of 135 film. Cleverly, one perforation was retained on the top edge between each frame which allowed for a very simple automatic frame spacing mechanism.
828 film was launched alongside the original Bantam cameras in 1935. Two models of cameras were initially released using the same Bakelite case, a model with a doublet f/11 lens for $5.75 ($126 in 2023 dollars) and an example with a triplet f/6.3 lens for $9.75 ($214 in 2023 dollars). This favored comparably to the contemporary Kodak Retina, which cost $57.50 ($1260 in 2023 dollars), albeit with the Bantam having a more limited feature set.
The first appearance of the Kodak Bantam Special was in the January 1937 Kodak dealer catalog. It was priced at an eye watering $110 ($2300 in 2023 dollars). A camera priced as such in a country still suffering from the Great Depression seems excessive. However, for that price one could get features found in no other Kodak and few other cameras on the market. These included a Compur Rapid shutter with a top speed of 1/500th and the camera's star feature, a "super speed" Anastigmat Ektar f/2.0 lens.
The Bantam Special would continue production until 1941, at which time it received a design change. Importation of the German Compur shutter had curtailed due to increasing hostilities between Nazi Germany and the United States. As a result, the Bantam Special was modified to utilize a Rochester made Kodak Supermatic shutter. The main change being a top speed of 1/400th instead of 1/500th. The camera had reduced in price by this point though, being $87.50 ($1900 in 2023) versus the original $110.
Kodak also began coating the interior surfaces of the lens at this point with Calcium Fluoride, as they had begun doing so on their other high end lenses in 1940, such as the Medalist and Ektra Ektars. It is also possible that some examples with Compur shutters were also coated starting in 1940, but I do not have a reliable source that can confirm this or have seen enough examples to make a firm assertion.
As with almost every other consumer product, the Bantam Special would be stop being produced in early 1942 as a part of the cessation of civilian manufacturing for the war effort.
Once the war ended, the Bantam Special would resume production in 1945 with the same Supermatic shutter as before the war. By 1946 Kodak would begin Magnesium Fluoride hard coating all surfaces of the lens and marking them with the Ⓛ indicating that the lens had been "Lumenized" or coated in Kodak marketing speak.
The camera would ultimately be discontinued in 1948. I don't have pricing data on what the exact cost was at the time of its discontinuation, but due to post-war inflation, it would have been relatively less expensive than it was pre-war. Its discontinuation was in due to its high price and low sales, the latter of which may have in part been due to greater variety of offerings in the post-war marketplace, but it also may have been that the camera looked outdated by then. What was once streamlined and art-deco was now old and out of style.
Kodak would replace this camera in their lineup with the Kodak Bantam RF. While lower priced, this solid bodied Bakelite camera was the only other Bantam to have a rangefinder. it did however, have a lower spec shutter and the Ektar f/2.0 had been replaced with a Kodak Ektanon f/3.9.
Overview
My Bantam Special is an early pre-war example with the Compur Rapid shutter, these are the most commonly encountered variation.
Beginning off, the most recognizable attribute of the Bantam Special is its streamlined, pinstriped body. The body of the camera, and its front "clamshell" door are both made of aluminum castings which were then precision machined. The raised ribs were polished while the rest of the body was painted with a lustrous black enamel.
While the design of the Bantam Special is often attributed to Walter Dorwin Teague (the man) the actual design work was not done by Teague. His firm, Walter Dorwin Teague and Associates, was hired by Kodak going back a number of years, assisting with the styling of cameras such as the Kodak Baby Brownie and Kodak Bullet. So, when Kodak went to design the Bantam Special, they employed Teague and Associates.
However, the actual design work was done by Chester W. Crumrine. His name appears on the US patent for the body of the Bantam Special and he is listed as "inventor" and not lawyer or witness, so there is good reason to believe he was the actual designer. Biographical information on Crumrine is scarce, other than the appearing in the 1940 census and being listed as an employee of Teague and Associates, I was unable to find anything about the man or a photo of him.
When closed for storage, the front door of the camera covers not only the lens of the camera, but the rangefinder and viewfinder windows as well. The small tab on the bottom of the door can be pulled out to form a foot to hold the camera in the vertical position when placed on a flat surface.
Pressing the round metal tab on in the middle edge of the door on the left (as viewed from the front) pops the front door open slightly, and then the user needs to pull the door open the rest of the way until it locks.
The lens board and bellows erect automatically showing the Compur Rapid shutter and lens and revealing the viewfinder and rangefinder windows. The viewfinder is mounted above the lens, and there are two smaller rangefinder windows to the left and right of it. There is also a small prism mounted in a round silver bracket atop the lens mount. When the camera is focused, this pivots to the left and right, changing the view in one field of the split image rangefinder.
Most of the controls for this camera are found on and around the lens board. Focusing is done by the circular mount and lever labeled with the distance in feet. In practice, you use the knurled button to focus, however, be aware that the button will be in front of the lens board when the lens is focused at infinity or at the minimum focus distance (3 feet). This can make it challenging to find or move the focusing lever at these points, requiring the user to drop the camera from their eye, move the lever so it is accusable, and then re-acquire the subject and continue focusing.
Because the Bantam Special is a folding camera, there is a potential for the door to strike the lens and potentially damage it or the struts that hold the lens board if the camera is not focused at infinity when the camera is closed. As a result, the focusing helical has cleverly been integrated with a lockout that prevents the door from being closed unless the lens is at infinity. This is an improvement over some of the early Retina cameras, where you could close the door with the lens forward and potentially damage something if you force it.
The release for the door is the focusing lever though, pushing it slightly past infinity against a small amount of spring tension will release the door latch and allow the door to close. Hence why the focusing scale has "CLOSE" with an arrow at its extreme. This can be problematic though if one is focusing near infinity, as you can inadvertently hit the release and cause the door to close slightly. At this point, you need to drop the camera from your eye, and re-open and lock the door before resuming.
The shutter is a rim set Compur Rapid offering speeds of Time, Bulb and 1 second to 1/500th of a second. For its era, this is a fast, excellent shutter. It is slightly handicapped however, by the placement of it in the Bantam Special, as the release lever is small and positioned at the 8 o'clock position on the side of the shutter near the letter K in Kodak. Since the Bantam Special has no body release, this is your primary method of releasing the shutter and it is difficult to locate when you have the camera at your eye and a long way from comfortable when holding the camera.
Combined with the small and thin body, I found the best way to hold the Bantam Special to be to cup your left hand like a C and hold the door, and then hold the right side body of the camera with your right hand thumb and index finger, and then use my right middle finger to focus and press the shutter release. Needless to say, this is a bit awkward, and I frequently had to drop the camera from my eye to find either the focusing lever or the shutter release, slowing down the process of shooting.
There is a cable release socket near the 10 o'clock position on the shutter housing, and a very short fixed release button would have been an option when this camera was new. However, trying out a release button of a similar style on the Bantam Special I found this then interfered more with the ability to use the focusing lever near the infinity position, and didn't offer any improvement.
The crown jewel of the Bantam Special is its 45mm f/2.0 Anastigmat Ektar lens.
When introduced, this was the fastest lens that Kodak had ever put on a consumer still camera. The Kodak Retina II with the Schneider Xenon f/2 would not be introduced until a year later.
"Ektar" was a Kodak trademark for a lens of superior quality, not of a specific optical design. Only the best Kodak lenses were marked as Ektars.
The 45mm f/2.0 Ektar is a six element in four group Double Gauss design, very similar to the contemporary Zeiss Biotar 58mm f/2 lens, but at a noticeably shorter focal length. When combined with the larger negative size of 828 film, this gave a much wider field of view.
This lens would have been highly color corrected for its era, as Kodachrome was a newly released and revolutionary invention in 1936 and the Bantam Special was designed to make full use of it. The fast f/2.0 lens being a great asset to the slow ASA 10 Kodachrome.
A couple other controls can be found on the upper right side of the camera, these being the film advance knob and the film door release. The advance knob is telescoping, pulling it up gives the user an easier time turning it, and it can then be pushed down to make the camera more compact so as to not snag in a pocket or bag.
The door release is the small vertical lever with a knurled button and is unique in that it needs to be pulled up to open the door. This makes it very unlikely that the door could be opened accidentally.
Moving to the back of the camera, we have a couple of other controls and the rear viewfinder and rangefinder eyepieces.
The window has a door that slides in front of it to guard against stray light entering. As compared to the normal red, the window on this camera and a number of the other Bantams is green. Green was chosen as panchromatic film was becoming popular at the time of the Bantams' release and red no longer provided any protection against stray light entering based on color insensitivity of the film. Being green allowed the window to be darker and pass less light, but since the human eye is most sensitive to green it still allowed one to see the numbers on the backing paper.
The split image rangefinder in this camera was the design of Joseph Mihalyi. Mihalyi was a Hungarian born immigrant to the USA who got his start in the Hawkeye Optical Works in the 1920s, then a division of the Eastman Kodak Company. He would work his way up the company and was known for his high aptitude for mechanical and optical design. By the mid 30s, Mihalyi was Chief Engineer at the Apparatus Division of Eastman Kodak. Not only did he design the rangefinder for the Bantam Special, he also designed the Kodak Service Rangefinder and cameras like the Kodak Super Six-20, Ektra and Medalist.
I was unable to get a clear picture through the rangefinder, so you will have to suffice for an illustration from the manual. I didn't encounter any challenges in using the rangefinder, it worked fine and I generally like split image rangefinders. Again, my only concerns were the distance between it and the viewfinder, and the small size.
The final area of the camera is the bottom, which is sparce except for the 1/4" tripod socket located on one end of the body. This photo also highlights the narrow width of the body and the heavy taper to each end, which make holding the camera challenging.
One final note about holding the camera, if you have a Bantam Special and actually plan taking it out and using it, I'd recommend you find and utilize the field case for it. This is a nice case, the bottom half of which is made of light spring steel covered with leather and lined with velvet on the interior. It gives some much needed protection to this camera, and also gives you a neck strap to support the camera, since the Bantam Special lacks strap lugs on the body. Without this protection, I would be concerned about carrying a camera like the Bantam Special around, given its collectability and value.
My Results
Shooting with an 828 camera is a little convoluted since 828 film is no longer commonly available. The easiest method I had found to use them is to use existing 828 spools and backing paper, and tape strips of 135 film to them.
For my first outing, I used some fresh FP4+ film for black and white shooting.
Next up, I loaded some Fuji C200. This is a common and inexpensive color film I use a lot of because it gives predictable results in most every camera I shoot it in.
First off, it's apparent I had an issue with framing, tending to cutoff the top or side of photos, depending on the orientation. This, however, is not the fault of the camera, but a fault of my alternative 828 film. Since 135 film has a row of sprocket holes on each edge, these will appear in the bottom of the film gate of an 828 camera. You can either scan with the sprocket holes, or crop them off like I did here. When shooting, I was trying to account for the difference and frame accordingly, but I did a poor job of doing so. If you plan on running an 828 camera in this way regularly, it might not be a bad idea to add a piece of tape in front of the viewfinder to create a smaller mask.
All the images, both black and white and color, show a lower than normal level of contrast and a bit of glow/diffusion in the highlights. This is a characteristic of most pre-war, fast, uncoated lenses. With many air-glass surfaces there is plenty of room for light to scatter as it passes through the lens, which reduces contrast. This is especially pronounced when shooting into the sun. A lens hood will help with this. The Bantam Special uses a Kodak Series VI 1 1/4" (31.5mm) adapter ring and a Series VI-A lens hood. (Note, the VI-A lens hood is different from the standard Series VI lens hood. It is smaller in diameter and shorter in order to clear the door of the camera).
The same effect also causes the color images to be a bit desaturated compared to what I would expect for this film, although this may not have been an issue for high-contrast, high saturation Kodachrome when this camera was new.
Other than that, the images were plenty sharp and properly exposed, so both the Compur-Rapid shutter and Ektar lens were doing their job, even when the lens was opened up to f/2.8 or f/4.
Zooming in on some of the color photos, I looked at areas where there are sharp transitions between light and dark areas, especially near the edges of the frame. Lesser lenses would show color fringing in these areas, with a red, blue or green outline showing due to chromatic aberration as the different colors are not focused to the same area. The lack of this indicates that this lens was highly color corrected as Kodak advertised.
Other than the framing issues, which were my own fault, the camera can make sharp photos. However, the handling of this camera was poor, particularly the position of the shutter release and focusing lever. The view and rangefinder windows were small and the body is difficult to hold. In use, I found myself having to take the camera down from my eye frequently, in order to find a control or make an adjustment and this detracted from the overall usability.
I am hesitant to say that any camera should be relegated to a shelf. Nonetheless, the Bantam Special is a very attractive and valuable art-deco camera, yet it handles poorly. As a result, this camera is probably not one I would shoot often or trust to any especially valuable photo opportunities. I value it highly in my collection, but it is not a regular user camera.
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