Agfa Silette

This week's camera is a charming little relic, the Agfa Silette. Produced from 1953 to the early 60s, this model was the first of many to use that name.

I got my model from an incredibly nice fellow who grilled me on the historical relevance of my eBay handle. He also was one of the many older folks who are really stoked to see young people still using film. Even when I just took this camera out for a walk, a guy came up to me and said it was the same camera he used as a kid, and offered to take a picture of Al and me.

I'm a bit biased, but this is a pretty good example of the analog/digital dichotomy: one tends to bring people together in unexpected ways, while the other seems like it should make the world smaller, but it in fact alienates people. But that's a discussion for another day (or with my fiancé, over at 43 Ends).

And before you feel like pointing out the hypocrisy of arguing the faults of the digital age in a blog, let's return to the Silette!

This lovely machine is pretty lo-fi. It's a 100% manual camera with a straight-up window viewfinder (the technical term, of course), zone focusing, a self timer and a hot shoe. This guy has a Pronto shutter, with five shutter speeds (up to 1/200 sec, and including B), but there were other models as fast as 1/300 (Prontor) or 1/500 (Compur). The lens is an Agfa Color Apotar f2.8 45mm, but again, there are other Silettes with slightly different lenses such as a f3.5 Color Apotar 45mm, a f2.8 50mm Agfa Color Solinar, and a Agfa Agnar f3.5 45mm. The Agnar models I believe all had a Vario shutter and a different finish ("silver paint").

As far as antiques go, this camera's a beaut. A few of the more useless functions on mine don't work, such as the film stock indicator. However, even after 50+ years the shutter on this guy works perfectly and the lens is flawless. Cosmetically, it could be in better condition as it quite tarnished in a few places. Fortunately I'm not too concerned about cosmetics when I have a machine that takes good pictures.

This was my first go trying to snap away without a light meter, and I was still learning so the exposure isn't great on these (but I like to think they're no less charming). Also I guess I still have to figure out how to compensate for the parallax on these viewfinder cameras (and, apparently, relearn how to get a level shot!). That in mind, these shots were a nice surprise from a camera I didn't think would even work.

All these photos were take with Superia 200.

Cheers,
Caity