The Agfa Isolette III is back

My beloved Agfa Isolette III is back from repair and is (almost) ready to hit the road.

This medium format camera used 120 film (6×6) and has an uncoupled – rangefinder. It means you measure the distance with rangefinder on top of the body and report the measure on the lens. It was build in a series of models in the 50,s and the model III comes with various lens. Mine is a coated, 85mm F4.5 Apotar lens. Spead goes fro bulb to 1/300s.

My dad bought this camera in 1952 in Germany where he was doing his military service at the time. I still have the “never” ready case, the good and the yellow filer and their repective cases.

I used it a fair bit through the 90’s, for random shots, outings with friends, weddings and of course travels. Outside of France, this fellow came to Roma, Madrid, Berlin, brussels and more recently Singapore of course and Burma. (I also brought it to India but did not use it in the end).

A few years back I discovered the lens was stuck and an attempt to fix failed so it lied in the treasure box until I sent it to Jurgen for repair this summer.

I just got the first roll back and it looks the issue if now fixed and the focusing and shutter are all fine.

Still one small problem to fix: the rangefinder does not work anymore… nothing is perfect but you can see above that  the guessometer works fine.

The Agfa is a brilliant camera for travel: quite small, funny enough looking to attract more sympathy that reproach when shooting in the street. looking forward to bring it along.

 

 

Advertisement

Leica M240 – A rented friend for a lonely week end (Day four, Monday)

So this is (was) Monday and time to bring back the camera to the shop. I woke up early and decided to walk there armed with the old Summitar 50mmF2.0 and the Voigtlander 21mmF4.0 Color Skopar.

First stop is at the Hong San See Temple on Mohammed Sultan Road.  The M240 shows no mercy for the WWII area screw mount lens : it is obvious the lens back focus; as I said yesterday no point using it if not with live view. The back focusing problem is visible even on the location, so no bad surprise when going back home.

Yes on the close and wide open shots the lens shows some “character”…

A bit frustrated I follow my journey along the Singapore river and put on the Color Skopar.

It is almost midday, the sky is cloudy as usual, so the light is not great. The colorful Alkaf bridge looks very dull on the above. Including the fact that the pictures are coming out with a wide purple band on the right side, even with the leica 21mm profile selected, this is really a no go.

The above is a bit better, but also required a bit of tweaking in Lightroom to remove the purple fringing on the right side.

 

CONCLUSION

So time for conclusion, I have played with the M9 and the M240 this summer, used some new and old lenses and…

1- I won’t rush to buy it: I think this is the most fair assessment I can do: I can probably afford to go to the shop and get a M240 + an Elmarit 28mmF2.8 but my test did not convince me that I really need to do it now.

2 – No mercy : the M240 has no mercy for lesser lenses : you may be lucky with a gem of an old lens, but clearly for me all these old ltm lens I have are useless. No point getting such an expensive kit to produce such below par shots. The weather in Luxembourg and Singapore is quite different but the 28mm Summicron results were far superior to the Elmarit.

3 – Back to film : Do not be mistaken, I really enjoyed the experience, going through the 800 to 900 shots of the week end was a bit painful, I could have done some things better and I may try again next year. Meanwhile I think that I would be more tempted to get a newer Leica film camera and a nice lens like a Summicron 35mm and wait before going digital. But meanwhile the meanwhile, I’ll go back to “junk” gear and Nikon digital. On a side note, I have been shooting recently with the D700 and 1980’s manual lenses again and unlike the Leica I am amazed by the results.