Agfa Super Silette. A quality rangefinder camera from the boys in München, in the free State of Bavaria!
- Kamera Ostalgie
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
Regular readers will know I hate buying cameras off eBay, as usually the camera in question is poorly described, all the many faults are not mentioned and the camera almost always needs professional repair before being put into use. The descriptions tell you nothing about the actual camera just a load of AI generated bullshit.
However, the other day, I bought this Agfa Super Silette with a 45mm Color-Apotar lens for the vast sum of 99p, total with postage £4.98. Well at that price, I had to give it a go. Nobody bothered to bid! Yet this camera comes with a excellent quality Color-Apotar lens and has the luxury of a rangefinder! For 99p, come on, why did no other people bother to bid? Oh, yes, of course, I forgot, late 1950's / early 1960's Agfas are not fashionable in the current old camera collector world are they? I forgot that|!
Oh, and it came with a case! A very nice high quality case at that! I like a good quality case! It finishes off the camera.
Price wise, this is not a one off, there are quite a few good looking Silettes and Super Silettes on the evil bay right now for under £15, the chances are if you watch them, the seller will send you an offer with a few pounds off, as many of them have been on for quite some time. Forget fashion and trends, look at specs and quality of design and construction instead, you won't go far wrong. Ask plenty of questions, really study the pictures, and don't forget to ask if the focus mechanism is smooth. The grease in these Agfas can dry out and make the focus very stiff, so always see if the focus is okay.
So, what do we get for our few quid with a Super Silette then, I hear you ask?
Well you get a high quality 35mm rangefinder camera, with a Prontor -SVS shutter with 10 speeds, maximum is a very useful 500th of a second, the Color-Apotar is a good lens by any standard and will focus down to about 3 feet. The range finder is an absolute cracker, a green Agfa logo shaped area sits in the middle of the viewfinder and is so clear to focus with it is unbelievable. No faded spot that you can't see here, like on many so called must have rangefinder cameras of the period, no this Agfa has one of the clearest rangefinders to use bar none. I'm the same age as the camera, my eyes have been better, but this rangefinder is still so clear in use it is unreal. You can't miss focus with this camera it is so good.
You won't bother with your M3 when you have this one to focus with, it is that easy to focus swiftly. Okay, there are no interchangeable lenses, but otherwise this rangefinder camera is a lovely camera. Seriously, forget all the hype, the reports, the magazine articles, the blog pages, they all copy one another, no original thought goes into most of them, if you want to try a 35mm rangefinder camera and don't want to part with hundreds of pounds, then look no further than a Super Silette, it is a capable well made, well speced piece of kit and from between £1 and £20 on the current market, they are literally for nothing. If you can find one with the Solinar lens, then that in practical terms will be a match for anything coming out of Wetzlar at the same time. Controversial, oh yes very, truthful ? Well try taking a picture with both, making a nice 10x8 enlargement and ask a load of your photographer mates to tell the difference! In fact you would probably get the same result from the Color-Apotar as it is not far behind.
We all have a tendency to copy, to follow trends, follow the current fashion and at the moment Agfa cameras do not have any of that hype or bullshit around them, so if we can move our thinking out of the follow blindly mode and look at cameras differently, in a sort of more matter of fact mode, then what is a good 35mm rangefinder camera takes on a whole different meaning. Is it well engineered, has a good shutter, a good lens and can I see the rangefinder and focus with it easily, what did it cost when it was new? If we look at these things, instead of 'is it fashionable or collectable at the moment,' then we can see things differently.
So lets have a quick Silette run down with original specs and pricing, this will give us a good idea as to what is what and where the top quality Silettes are in the overall Agfa range.
Silette Vario - At £9.18.6 this was the entry level Silette with the Vario three speed shutter and the Color-Agnar f3.5, 45mm lens. Ref 2100.
Silette Brightline 4-speed.- At £15.17.8 you got a Silette with a 4 speed Vario shutter and a faster f2.8 45mm Color Agnar lens. Ref 2101.
Silette Brightline 9 Speed - At £21.0.9 this Silette came with the Color-Apotar f2.8, 45mm lens with a 9 Speed Prontor SVS shutter. Ref 2102.
Solette Solinar Brightline - At £ 24.14.2 this Silette had to be a bargain, with the superb Color Solinar 4 element lens, 10 speed Compur-Rapid shutter, Ref 2104.
Super Silette L - Price not known. Lens is the up market 50mm f2.8 Color-Solinar with a Syncro-Compur shutter and a rangefinder. No bright line finder on this model. Not many of this particular Silette seemed to get to Great Britain, but more common in Germany, Austria, Canada & the USA. Ref 2105.
Silette L - £ 26.11.3 The Silette with a built in light meter. Back to a 4 Speed Pronto shutter and the Color Apotar f2.8 45mm lens. Ref 2106.
Silette LK - £ 32.11.0 This model has a coupled built in light meter. Color-Apotar lens f2.8 of 45mm, with a Protor LK 5 speed shutter. Ref 2108.
Super Silette - £ 31.11.6 Coupled Rangefinder, 10 speed Prontor SVS shutter, Color Apotar f 2.8 45mm lens. Ref 2107.
Super Silette LK - £39.9.8 Coupled Rangefinder, coupled light meter, Pronto LK 6 speed shutter, Color-Apotar f2.8 45mm lens. Ref 2110.
Super Silette Automatic - £50.17.2 Top of the range, with coupled rangefinder, coupled light meter, Color-Solinar f 2.8 50mm 4 element lens, 9 speed Prontor SLK shutter. Ref 2120.
So that is roughly the list of Silette based models of the very late 1950's to very early 1960's, I'm sure there will be the odd variation that I've missed out and some minor sub variations. But in a nutshell, this is what is available.
The one I purchased recently is the Super Silette Ref. number 2107. The cost when new was a staggering £31 11 shillings and sixpence. That was a lot of money in the very early 1960's, which tells you that this was a decent camera in its day.
I'm no mathematician, when I run out of fingers I'm stuck, but looking at the web it seems that the value of £32 from 1960 would be around £1000 in real terms today! So whatever way you look at it the Agfa Super Silette was an expensive bit of kit when it was new, this was not a cheap run of the mill camera when it came out, this was a high end, high quality item. Not something you should be able to pick up for a pound 65 years later. So when searching for a good quality camera from the 50's or 60's really study the spec and find out what the camera in question cost on the photographic market when it was new. This will give you a far better indication of quality than modern day articles and what a camera is selling at today. Forget today with all the hype and bull, go back to what was said about it when the camera was new and what it cost, that is a much better, more practical, more realistic way of evaluating a camera today in my opinion.
So what was even better in the Agfa line up at the time this Super Silette was produced ?
Well, not much apart from the Super Silette LK which had a coupled light meter and a coupled rangefinder rangefinder for just under £40.
But the star of the Agfa Silette show at that time was the Agfa Silette Automatic with coupled light meter and rangefinder but with the very high quality Color-Solinar 50mm 2.8 lens at a whopping fifty pounds, seventeen shillings and tuppence!
Most of these good quality Agfas are lost in a sea of lesser specification models, all going for around the same price, what I call the brown 50's Agfa price! Check specs and lenses you too can get a good quality bargain on eBay! Just take your time and sift through them!
So what is a Super Silette actually like? Well it is nicely finished, the Agfa chrome is at its best on these later models. It feels right. Open the back by pulling down a little catch with your finger nail and the back springs open, the back is hinged by the way. Inside is a little reminder on the inside of the door to use Agfa Isopan IF 17 film! The pressure plate is very nicely made. You drop your film in the left hand side, the re-wind knob pulls up to let you do that, but you may need a little bit of pressure to lift it up to create space for the film. Once the cassette is in, push back down on the re-wind knob, pull your film across in the normal manner, ensure the perforations are on the cogs and the film leader is tucked into the wind on spool, replace the back, fire off a couple of blank frames set the counter and away you go!
Focusing is easy, turning the front ring of the lens with my left hand and watching the green Agfa rangefinder through the large clear viewfinder. It is quick easy and simple!
However, there is a sort of snap shot position for those who like to just point, shoot, then hope! The 30 feet mark is highlighted in red, leave the camera set at that figure, then you have every chance of getting a result. There may or may not be time to take the shot again properly focused, so always leave the camera at thirty feet, I tend to take this a bit further as I mainly use 100 ASA black and white print film, so I leave the shutter at 125 and the stop at f 11, nine times out of ten you will get a result.
Having said all that, this rangefinder on the Super Silette is so quick and easy to focus even in low light you may never need to guess.
The shutter release is large and easy to use, you really can't miss it, it does not have the akward long thow of the Silettes sister camera, the Optima, so is much nicer to operate. I only have one little grumble, sometimes if using the Silette in its case, the edge of the case sticks out a little and you can foul it with your shutter finger, so just be aware.
There is just one thing I don't like about the later Super Silettes and for that matter the Optimas too. That is the re-wind mechanism. It sort of lacks feel. I'm more used to Exa and Praktica cameras of the period, with them you can feel when the film is re-wound by how the rewind knob or lever reacts, on the Silettes and Optimas I don't get this feedback when re winding the film the same. I have only twice in my life lost pictures by not having re-wound the film properly, once on a Super Silette, once on an Optima, so just be careful.
That is the only bad point on the Super Silette, but it may be more down to me being used to Exa and Praktica, which are much more 'agricultural' in the feel of their engineering, where you really know that the film is back in its can, rather than the fault of the Agfa Super Silette, but just be careful, just in case it is not down to me!
There are currently over 400 Agfa Silettes on eBay U.K, over 1000 if you look world wide, most of them are really cheap, now I am not a great fan of eBay and I'm not really a betting man, but with all these to choose from, the odds must be in your favour! With diligent research, lots of questions and that little bit of luck, you should be able to find one reasonable. Try one, I think you will like it. If you manage to obtain one, you won't have to dream about buying a Leica ever again!
I hope you liked this post it was fun to write!
Unfortunately Kamera Ostalgie blog will be closing soon, as it really is not viable to carry on. The cost of hosting a web page and domain name is too much for the number of views and lack of interaction the site actually gets, so my money is going to go into buying more film and my time into taking more pictures, both of which have suffered since starting the blog!
However I will try and get a few more posts posted before the plug is pulled!
Take care,
Phil
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