This was a high end high precision lens made for Kodak Retina Reflex cameras, also for the Kodak Instamatic Reflex body.

That Instamatic camera would be another story.

I used the lens years ago with that Kodak body, loaded with 126 cartridge film. Such film is no longer easy to find, and even more difficult to process.

Then last month Wesley told me adapters were available for the DKL mount lenses so that they can be used with other bodies. I ordered a brand new adapter from a dealer in China, for Pentax K mount, and it arrived very quickly.

Out of the box, I was first disappointed to find out the adapter had probably not been tested by the maker, and it was impossible to even mount a lens into it. One of the small screws inside that holds the assembly together had a protruding head preventing the back of the lens from going into the cavity.
And in the photo of the Instamatic body, see the little black tab in the slot inside the cavity on the right side? That is the coupler for setting the aperture. It is missing in the new adapter, so that the lens would have to always stay at f/22.

I was determined, and I went to work. I used a drill bit to ground out the protruding screw head, allowing the Xenon lens to fit into the opening.
Then I discovered a screw in the side of the adapter, which when turned the right number of times had a tip that moved into the inner space between lens and adapter to serve as a pin to couple the stop-down mechanism.

Now I was in business.
Adapter went onto a Pentax digital body, Xenon lens went into the adapter.

Then at two different times of day I went outside and did the walk around, looking for anything whose inner beauty might be teased out with the lens.

All shots are hand held. And everything is in our back yard or front yard, except for the busted up lawn mower. That is next door.

I found it worked best with one full stop of extra exposure dialed into the camera body.
Setting was Aperture Priority, and I had to do stop down metering, since the aperture is coupled to the adapter, but not to the camera body.
Everything also had to be manually focused.
I did some bracketing, to see what looked best, and to vary depth of field.
More than half the images were trashed. These below are what I thought the best.
Some of the images are cropped. Which is okay, considering the fact that when you mount a film camera lens to a 2/3 sensor digital SLR body, the image is essentially cropped when you capture it.

Please click on thumbnails to see enlarged.
All images are ©2019 E.J.Kowalski.
Thanks! Ed