Here are my first (and second) impressions after playing with 'new' Agfa Ambi Silette. For those who don't know Ambi Silette: Agfa Ambi Silette is a 'system' rangefinder introduced in 1957. It was a high end rangefinder with switchable frame lines in the viewfinder and line of five beautiful lenses: - Standard: 50mm f2.8 Color Solinar - Wide: 35mm f4 Color Ambion - Standard: 50mm f2 Color Solagon (for rich people) - Tele: 90mm f4 Color Telinear - Tele: 130mm f4 Color Telinear My example is in VG+ condition.

Silette is a name used by the German maker Agfa from 1953 to 1974 to designate successive.

Everything works together with 1 second and the self-timer. Quality and feel: Camera is quite heavy, with nice feel. Hp Proliant Dl320 G5 Bios Update on this page. Very well built, You can feel it especially while cocking the shutter, hearing the sound of expensive Synchro-Compur shutter, looking thru the viewfinder. But there is more details that shows QUALITY: Rangefinder cover's inner surface is covered with black suede (velvet), and the part sliding on the lens' collar transferring the movement to rangefinder: It's like a big ballpoint pen!!!

It's not only a metal tip, sliding on the flat surface, it's like a ball bearing! Now, that's luxurious! Nice big switch on the top is switching frame lines for a particular lens (35 - 50 - 90). Another thing (don't laugh). On the cold-shoe plate is a engraved serial number.

I don't know if it's engraved, stamped or whatever. Lines are thinner than human hair and without any pressing or engraving marks. That's quite thrilling. No money saving here. Spss 17 Edge Keygen. On the winding lever there is a nice round frame counter counting backwards (frames left).

On the rewind knob you have a window where you can set film ISO, just to remember. One more thing; Under the lens, by the lens release bytton, there is a small plate that You can pull-out for additional camera support, especially when longer lenses are attached. Winding action says QUALITY, with spring being quite strong. Shutter release is very soft, actually too soft for me, like very weak spring, but that's fine, no complains here. Lens 50mm f2.8 Color Solinar lens have the opinion of an excellent lens. Agfa had different lens classes, from inexpensive Agnar, thru the more luxurious Apotar to high-end Solinar.

Solagon was the highest quality lens, very rare and expensive, like Voigtlander's Color-Skopar being High-end and Ultron being the highest-end. My example is very clean, with clear glass and rings rotating nicely.

There is a small dent on the filter's thread. Lens' Performance: For the test I used (as always) fresh Fuji Superia 100, Very good, inexpensive film made in Japan. Exposure was metered with trusty Canonet GIII or digital P&S Canon S90.

Well, I'm quite disappointed with this lens. First what suprised me was a vignetting.

At 2.8 this lens vignettes as hell. Also corner sharpness is not that good.

Something You might expect from old F2 lens, not f2.8. Vitomatic's Color Skopar is much better.

I got two Vitomatics IIa, and they got excellent lenses. The good thing is that center of the picture is always tack-sharp, from f2,8. But center of the image isn't everything. After composing and shooting with excellent SLR lenses (Minolta MD, Konica Hexanon) it's clear, that this lens isn't excellent. I think optically it's well adjusted. I did a simple test setting lens at 1m and measuring distance between object - film plane with measuring tape. Picture (business card) came out fine.

On the same picture You can see very nice bokeh. I may sound like I'm complaining about this lens, but when stopped down to f5.6 it delivers excellent results. I know, at f5.6 every lens should perform nicely. But knowing that You can have very high quality out of this lovely system. Especially last image ('Sunny day') shoot at f5.6, maybe f8 looks excellent.

If You fall in love with this camera and remember to stop-down the lens to f5.6 You will be more than happy. Agfa Ambi Silette is a High-end camera that will probably never let You down. OK, now the pictures, for Your Viewing Pleasure. Hi, Maciek Thanks for an interesting post! I'd like to make a couple of points, being an Ambi Silette owner myself. Firstly - do you find the flap over the RF window a d**m nuisance? Some folks did, and even went so far as to remove it.

Secondly, I think you're wrong about the F2 Solagon being an option additional lens for the Ambi Silette. AFAIK, the F2 Solagon was an option for the Super Silette, but fixed to the camera. The matter of just why the six elelement F2 Solagon wasn't supplied with 1/c lens mount for the Ambi has come up before on the Forum, and the concencus was that its FL would have had to be lengthened to maybe 60mm to endable the rear elements to clear the shutter leaves. There just wasn't enough space to cram all that glass in!