A brief interlude: The Agfa Silette Rapid F

From 1953 until 1974 Agfa released a family of 35mm cameras known as the Silette series. A basic manual focus viewfinder camera, these came in various forms and with different features. In the early 1960s, Agfa released a Rapid film version in competition with Kodak’s introduction of instamatic film. In fact, they released three Rapid versions, the Silette Rapid I, the Rapid L, and the Rapid F.

All three Rapid cameras had the same characteristics as their 35mm counterparts, but instead of a cold shoe for an external flash, the Rapid F (and Silette F) had a small translucent window and a flip up lid into which a flash bulb could be plugged. The flash bulb was powered by a Pertrix No. 74 battery, which nowadays is no longer available, but otherwise the camera was wholly mechanical. The Agfa Rapid F has a 45mm f2.8 Agnar lens and a Parator shutter with speeds of 1/30s – 1/250s (plus B and a synchro flash speed, but I’m not sure what this is). It has a four leaf iris, with apertures from f2.8 – f22.

Being a Rapid camera, the top plate of the camera is plain with the wind-on lever on the bottom left of the body. One wind of this will push the film one frames width from the full Rapid canister on the left to the empty canister on the right. 

On the bottom of the camera is a tripod screw and the film counter, which counts down from 12 to one. When the count reaches 1, the shutter is disabled and you can only wind on to finish the film. The position of the ratchets that catch the film sprockets to move the film suggests that a leader of about 40mm of film is left outside the canister. 

My particular model, the Agfa Silette Rapid F, was picked up for 20€ from the ‘Not Passed’ category of the Kamerastore website. Although it has ‘flaws that will affect typical use’, the only thing that was wrong with this camera was that the little translucent window for the flashgun was missing. Otherwise, it was perfectly sound.

The aperture selection, shutter speed selection, and zone focusing are all set on the lens assembly. Selecting the shutter speed and aperture is quite straightforward, but the focusing confused me for a second. On the focusing ring, at the top and bottom are two arrows. Rotating the lens moves little icons on the top of the lens, a church and a mountain for infinity, a group of people for middle distance, and two heads for portrait/close up. At the same time, at the bottom of the focusing ring are shown distances in metres and feet. Choosing the right symbol, or setting the distance, should give reasonably close focus. 

As I have several Rapid canisters filled with Harman Phoenix film for the Frugal Film Project, I took one of these to use with the Agfa Silette Rapid F. Loading the Rapid F was simple enough, just a question of making sure the wind-on ratchets lined up with the sprockets of the film and slowly advancing the film so that it fed into the empty canister. Then I closed the back of the camera and shot two frames until the counter was at zero. 

It was a lovely sunny afternoon, so I took the Rapid F to Águas Boas. I took a range of images, long distance, middle distance, and close-up using the symbols on the lens and also the distance markers. To measure the exposure I used an app called Camera Meter. After exposing the film, I decanted the 35mm back into a 35mm cassette and took it to the lab. 

The first thing to say about this camera is that it’s really nice to use. All the movements are smooth, and a single wind of the lever moves the film from one frame to the next. The only thing that confused me early on was the focusing with the symbols, but even that became intuitive after a while. I was a little unsure whether the film was feeding properly into the empty canister, but there’s a different ‘feel’ to the wind on lever when film is present in the film gate and when it is not. I noticed that with the Lomo Smena SL, too.

The images came out really well, although with the high contrast Harman Phoenix emulsion some of the highlights were really blown out. I’ll put that down to my faulty exposure reading rather than the camera. On the whole, I was really happy with how the Agfa Silette Rapid F performed, and it’s certainly earned its place as a backup camera to the Welta Penti II ‘Golden Wonder’ and the Lomo Smena SL. 

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