Tag: Agfa
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Camera Review: Ansco B-2 Cadet
For reasons known only to them, camera manufacturers have, over the years, felt that “cadet” was a good name for a camera. There are at least 20 or so cameras (plus an exposure meter and an enlarger) called Cadets, to include at least eight made by the Ansco company. There’s the Ansco Cadet A8, B2,…
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Camera Test: Agfa Ansco No. 1A Ready-Set Special
This is a camera I bought, not knowing anything at all about it, simply because I thought it looked cool. It turns out that this particular model is not all that well-known, but the overall Ready-set series is. The Ready-Set series was introduced around 1928, around the time Ansco merged with the German firm Agfa…
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Pongal in Chennai / Camera Test
Often I blog about old cameras I’m testing out, often I blog about things we see and experience in India. This post has a little of both! The Ansco Agfa Karomat 36 (known by variants of that name) is an Agfa Karat 36 rebadged for the American market, where it was sold by Ansco from…
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Testing the Ansco Regent
Sometimes I’m not sure whether these posts I do on whether or not I’ve been able to make these vintage cameras work are more about the cameras, or about the content of the photos I’ve managed to snap. This is one of those posts, and explains why I’ll share more of the photos from the…
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Testing the Agfa Silette Rapid F
When I’m considering vintage cameras for purchase, I specifically look for cameras that still appear to work, and for which film can still be acquired somehow. Then, periodically, I grab a couple and test them out. This week, it’s the Agfa Silette Rapid F. This is actually one of the first cameras I acquired; when…
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Cross Processing 127 Film
When I first started playing around with vintage cameras, I wasn’t sure what kind of film to order, and just for fun, ordered a roll of Rollei Crossbird, without really knowing what it was. It turns out this is slide film – i.e. “positive” or “color reversal” film you would use for old-fashioned slides, rather…
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Ansco B2 Cadet: Photography with an Old Box Camera
Sure, today’s fancy digital cameras have a lot of tricks to ensure your photos turn out picture-perfect. But compared to the simplicity of an old box camera like Ansco’s B2 Cadet, the photos aren’t THAT much better! Basically a wooden box without any real lens, and a 1/60 second shutter that allows light into a…
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Vintage Photos with the Agfa Billy Record I
Here’s another post about vintage cameras from this blog that doesn’t know what it wants to be. Agfa’s Billy Record I was produced from 1950 to 1952 in the U.S. Zone of post-World War II Germany. The export model (to the U.S.) was known as the Ventura 69. It shoots at 3 speeds (1/25, 1/50,…
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B&W Photos from an Old Agfa
My latest hobby is drawing some ire from the “head of household” but it seems harmless enough – scouring eBay for deals on vintage cameras, and, for those for which film is still available, experimenting with photographs to see if I can master this ancient art which is quickly being lost in the age of…
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Joining the Lomography Bandwagon: Agfa Billy
A few years ago, I picked up a vintage camera in really good shape at a flea market in Europe. I think it cost like 30 bucks and I picked it from a tale with at least a dozen other vintage cameras. And it has sat on a shelf with one of those boxy old…