This forgotten 70 year old medium format camera captured my childhood

My childhood was captured with lots of different analog cameras. One of them was the Agfa Super Isolette from my grandfather. Funny thing is, this medium format range finder camera was in my possession since many years and I didn’t even know it.

The Agfa Super Isolette is a beautiful range finder camera that was only produced between 1954 and 1960

I only realized I had this medium format camera while going through my old cameras to sell. As always it was labelled with my grandpa’s name and with that I figured this must have captured lots of my childhood memories. So I went through some old photo albums and looked for square photographs.

I found lots of square photographs from my past, most of them were captured on my grandparents property.
Back then I already had a camera around my neck.

These photographs brought back some good memories that I had back then. So it was only logical for me, to recapture places of my childhood memories with it. Before I could do that I cleaned the camera and learned more about it. The camera has a 75mm F3.5 Agfa Solinar lens attached to its bellows, this lens is coupled with the range finder. The Compur shutter allows times up to 1/500 of a second, and all of them can be synced with a strobe.

The Agfa Solinar lens is designed with 4 optical elements, similar to the Tessar design. No wonder it it is a very sharp lens. You can see some high res samples in my video The 10 beautiful aperture blades create a wonderful creamy Bokeh.

The first thing that bothered me a bit was the focus nob, it moves away from infinity as it should, but you need lots of force to move it back.

I hoped that I still can shoot with this issue and loaded a roll of Ilford HP5 into the camera.

This full mechanical camera features lots of amazing features for that time frame.
Even the shutter is mounted on the lens, there is a double exposure prevention system. No wonder the Agfa Super Isolette was their top of the line camera model back then.

It also detects the first frame of your film roll, this little gear is responsible for that.

I was lucky enough that It came in the makers box and I also got the original leather case.

I captured the first frame in the city of Graz and after that I thought this is the end of my story, because I could not advance the film to the next frame after I released the shutter. So I went to the shop of Jo Geier and got a quick fix.

Now I could finally start my journey to visit places I grew up and capture them with my grandfathers camera.The best way to experience my blast from the past is to watch my video

I feel very fortunate and lucky to own now two very nice range finder cameras. If you want to know more about my first childhood camera (Leica) story, visit this link: https://blog.markus-hofstaetter.at/2024/07/i-was-not-ready-for-this/

Edit: because people are wondering what tiny camera I had around my neck back then: I went back to the Album and recaptured it. And it looks like tiny SLR. If anybody knows what camera it is, please comment.

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Comment (1) on “This forgotten 70 year old medium format camera captured my childhood”

Mike H says:

October 12, 2024 at 13:44

OK that clears up some of the confusing elements of the scan, so it’s not a Rollei 35.

But what?

If it’s an SLR it would have to be 110 or half-frame, surely. But I don’t think there was a silver Pentax Auto 110, and it doesn’t look like a Pen F.

Almost looks Soviet.

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Comment (1) on “This forgotten 70 year old medium format camera captured my childhood”