Agfa Silette, Aires Viscount, and Argoflex 75

I am back to going through my scanned negatives from last year.  I am picking out one image for each camera - an image that I haven't posted before.

The first one is from one of my favorite 1950's zone focusing cameras, the Agfa Silette.  I did a post on the Agfa Silette a short time ago. The film is Fuji 200.

I posted about the Aires Viscount back in January.  Unfortunately, the focusing ring is broke in my Viscount, however it is stuck at a distance which with the right aperture does make it usable for some shots.  Hopefully I will get the around to fixing the Aires Viscount this year.  The film is HP5 in Extol.

The last photo is from the Argoflex 75.  I haven't written anything about this camera and haven't used it much.  It is made for 620 film, however I did manage to fit a 120 roll into it.  It worked okay, however it got pretty hard to wind by the end of the roll.  The Argoflex 75 is one of the pseudo TLRs that were popular in the 1950's.  Made by the famous Argus Company, it is fixed focus with two shutter speeds, instant and time, and one aperture(f/11).  It seems like a decent enough picture taker for what it is.  And it is solidly built with a fairly bright viewfinder. The film here was Arista.Edu 100. 

Aires Viscount

Made: 1959
Shutter: Seikosha-SLV leaf 
Shutter speeds: 1 sec to 1/500 sec plus B
Lens: Six element 45mm f1.9 H Coral














I think this is one of the most beautiful cameras that I have.  Surprisingly to me at least it may have been a fairly inexpensive camera in its day.  I have seen some info in various forums that indicate that the Aires Viscount sold for around $60 back in the 1950's.  The one that I have works well with the exception of one critical flaw.  The focusing ring appears loose.  So far I haven't been able to find any info on how to fix it.  Someday I plan to make some time to spend on the camera repair forum to see if I can get headed in the right direction.

So right now the Aires Viscount is mostly just to look at.  I did notice that the rangefinder spot comes into focus on objects that are around 15 feet.  So I figured I could take some pictures using f/16 and get a reasonable focus.  I loaded about ten exposures of bulk HP5 and things worked out well enough.  At least it did let me have a taste of what the camera would be like to use.  And I would say that the actual use was enjoyable enough to give me some motivation to get the Aires Viscount working.  It is a very smooth camera with a quiet shutter.  So hopefully 2013 will be the year when this camera is restored.  Below are a couple of the photos from my experiment.