Agfa Silette

When I was going through film images from the past year I noticed that I hadn't made a post for the Agfa Silette. I must have been planning to do so since I made a Silette gallery a while ago.  First made in 1953, the Agfa Silette is a fairly simple scale focusing camera using 35mm film.  The one I have seems to be the most common of the first version of the Silette.  It has a 1/25 - 1/200 plus B Pronto shutter and a 45mm f/3.5 3 element Agfa Apotar lens.  One notable feature of the Silette is that it has a film advance lever. That actually was a fairly advanced feature for a camera for this era. And to add to that the film advance also cocked the shutter! The Silette is a scale focusing camera.  Which means you have to guess the distance and then select it with the scale focusing ring.  The lens focuses to three feet.  Scale focusing may be a little intimidating if you haven't used it before, however with some practice and a study of the depth of field charts for the camera, it is easy to get good results.

The Agfa Silette appears to have originally sold for around $40 which would be a little over $300 today.  Just judging by the numbers of this camera that are still around Agfa must have sold a lot of them.  Ansco also sold the same camera in the US as the Ansco Memar. It is not hard to see why the Silette was so popular.  It is a well-designed easy to use camera capable of giving very good results.  For the money I think it could be argued that it was one of the best cameras around during its time. 

Agfa Silette Gallery