Agfa Ambiflex
Specifications
- 135 film; 24*36mm negatives
- interchangeable lens
- interchangeable viewfinder
- built-in coupled selenium light meter
- Prontor-Reflex leaf shutter (1/300s to 1s)
- standard lens: Agfa Color-Solinar 50mm f/2.8; 4 elements in 3 groups; coated
About the camera
I wanted to try out a leaf-shutter-equipped 35mm SLR for a while but I had to find one that works properly. The added complexity of putting a leaf shutter in a SLR and the fact that most of these date back from the late 1950s and early 1960s does not help. Then this camera came my way! It works almost flawlessly, only the slow speeds didn't run properly.
It is very heavy and large but I enjoy the way it handles. The fit and finish especially are astounding. Despite its weirdness, this camera is easy to use. Shutter and aperture controls as well as focusing are done on the lens barrel. The selenium light meter reading is done with a little match needle on the top right of the camera.
What is unusual from a modern user's perspective (but not back when this camera was new) is the fact that the mirror does not return automatically after firing the shutter. You have to advance the film to cock the shutter and bring down the mirror. This makes taking a picture with this camera feel 'definitive'. You take the picture and then there's nothing in the viewfinder!
Speaking of the viewfinder it is quite bright and large for a camera of this age but I believe it only covers a fairly small portion of the frame, 85% perhaps. It is usable with glasses but not super comfortably.
Results
My first roll is okay. It is Fomapan 200 developed in stock Fomadon Excel (Xtol clone). All the photos here were shot with the Color-Solinar 50mm f/2.8 except the last one which was shot with the Color-Telinear 135mm f/4 (it is cropped due to a light leak caused by the bulk loading process). Both lenses seem to have adequate sharpness especially the 50mm when stopped down. There is a bit of bloom which are certainly due to the simple coatings of the lenses. I quite enjoy this look. I printed some shots from this roll and they look quite a bit better on paper. It seems my scanner doesn't fare too well with low contrast black and white negatives. I got scratches on some negatives because I forgot to clean the film compartment before loading the camera... I'll be more careful next time!
I now have a 35mm lens so I will have to try this camera again and maybe get better results with the other lenses as well!
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