I was lent a lovely blue example of this camera by a friend who works at West Yorkshire Cameras. I went to visit him one day while I was in Leeds. I was there to ask if they could fix the battery compartment of my Konica Auto-Reflex. Amazingly, he had never seen one before and became enamoured. I said he could borrow it, in return, from his bag he fished out this camera. It is one that I had seen him with before, but I had never actually used one.

I took quite a few photos of this cracking looking camera as I knew I would have to give it back.

He was very careful to remind me to take care of the cartridges as the camera would not work without them. This camera from 1960s uses 35mm film, but loaded into the Agfa Rapid film Fast Load System. The camera needs two of these cartridges, one for the blank film and one for take up. The film counter shows 24 exposures which is set by a dial under the back cover before you start shooting. The camera takes half-frame format photos so that meant you loaded 12 full frame exposures to the empty spool and a little for the leader/ender??

I loaded an unexposed roll of double-x into an SLR, I took 14 shots with the cap still on, at a high speed, with a small aperture, in the dark. Then I put it in a dark bag along with an empty rapid cartridge, cut the film, and transfered the hopefully still blank film to the rapid.

To wind on the film, you push in the plunger on the side. There is no light meter or rangefinder. Everything you need to set the camera manually can be found around the lens. There are 3 speeds to choose from 1/30th, 1/60th, and 1/125th plus bulb, so 4 then ;-). The available apertures range from f3.5 to f22.

With all that in mind, I took this set up to London and got to shooting. Here are some of the results.

I can honestly say, I no longer dislike half-frame cameras. I have tried quite a few half-frame cameras recently that I have really enjoyed using, this being one of them.

I liked this camera so much that I search for a Penti II which has the addition of a light meter. I found one on ebay, plus a couple of cheap agfa cameras that had cartridges inside. I found it was cheaper to buy a couple of those cameras than the cartridges by themselves. I can always play with the cameras at a later date if they turned out to be working. The camera I chose was being sold by another friend, which was helpful when the camera arrived, because…

Can you see the issue? The name of the camera is printed under the lens barrel. It was another Penti I and not the II. To be fair they do look very similar and the photos didn’t show this part of the lens. My friend was so apologetic and offered a refund, but I kept the camera. He offered to keep searching for a II for me and let me have it in the future for a bargain price. Fair enough, it was a genuine mistake, plus I do like this camera.

I loaded it in the same way as the original one I tried, this time with exeter 100 and wandered around with it. Here are some of the results.

The back of this example was a lot trickier to replace but other than that it worked really well. I returned the blue version to my friend and collected my Konica. It turned out that he had also bought himself a copy of my camera…we can’t lend each other cameras again, it is too expensive. Mind you, it was a lot more expensive for him 🙂 Though, I am still waiting for my lovely Konica lens cap??

Though I do like this camera, I am not interested in getting all the different coloured versions, but still a II would be nice to try. Now I have the rapid cartridges, I wouldn’t mind getting others, but if you are thinking of getting one for yourself, you have to take this quirk into account. You will need two cartridges and a dark bag at least. Plus you will have to develop the film yourself or make sure you get the rapids back from the developer. It all adds to the fun though.

In other news, I am going camping tomorrow so it will be a couple of weeks before I publish a new camera review. I might publish some throwback posts. But it is also coming to the end of the school year which means I will be stressed and busy. Roll on summer…and hopefully sun.