Agfa Isolette II

[womble]

I found a very clean looking copy of this camera in a local charity shop for £12.50. The self timer doesn't seem to work, but everything else looks OK. The focus didn't want to move at first but is now rotating OK if a little stiff. I assume that the grease had gone a bit solid. I have loaded it with a roll of Kodak Tri-X and we'll see what happens. Fingers crossed...

K.

[Minolfan]

Wish you luck! Have you checked the bellows? They often have pinoles
The grease is sometimes sofar degraded that you have to clean shutter and focusing first with ronsonol to get things moving.
So yours is not too bad.
If everything works it is a nice shooter.

[sonyrokkor]

Fingers crossed too.

Very good new when an old machine is working again.

When you use him, sure will smile. We will too.

[martinsmith99]

What lens has it got?

I've an Isolette ii with Apotar lens; it's pretty sharp. It's one of my most-used cameras.

If the body is pitted, a glass fibre eraser pen brings it up as good as new.

[Attila]

[womble]

[Lloydy]

My Medis and the Watameter are both Imperial, and damn proud of it - no monkeymeters around here !

[Minolfan]

I have Pollux, Watameter and Voigtländer. Nice and cheap.
The latter looks best. The Pollux needs some new leatherette.
But the Watameter is a luxury version, meters beautifully mirrored inside, metering from 0.55m!
Found in the local shrift store in neat leather case for € 3.50. I forgot to haggle.

[yinyangbt]

Congrats for your new cam , Kris !
It's a beautiful little camera ! It can be seductive , but ,like all the divas , can give you some headaches , until you learn how to keep the situation under control .
Firstly , fix the distance , allways, because you can forget this , when you fiddle with the aperture setting / shutter setting / cocking the shutter / winding the film in the right position (attention , allways look carefully to see the number of the frame in the red window on back of the camera)/ kinda composing / pressing the shutter .
Can drive you nuts , or can fall in love forever with this one !
For the beginning I tried to use my Kiev 3a as rangefinder , but I ordered a russian Blik on the net (18-20 E) .I'll let you know if I throwed the money on the window or not ,but i think you can find some cheaper in UK (don't know if in meters ).
I'll try to develop my films the next week. Curious if I got something .

[martinsmith99]

[Farside]

I have a lovely old Pullin (Imperial) which is a joy to use - really needs to be more accuratized though, as it gets more inaccurate with distance. Not really a problem if I'm shooting at f:8 or narrower.