Garage Find - Agfa Ambi Silette

[Hati]

Hey all, I've literally joined because of this camera. It works in spite of what happened to it, that I will explain after I show you these images. But suffice it to say, its got some fantastic mechanical feel to the controls because of it's age and its all steel construction. This camera may be my gateway into a more serious hobby when it comes to photography. I've instantly fallen in love with it. Better than my current camera which has auto-focus that I have to argue with all the time.

anyway, images

Initial condition



After some cleaning up.



So I've given it a slight clean. The problems here are as follows;

Sometime in it's life a battery leaked inside it. The plastic on the back and on one side of the fascia, you can probably see it, is ruined. There's likely dried acid inside the camera. So what I want to do is show this camera a little bit of love, clean it up and give it some light restoration. Make it look as nice as it once did, clean out all the gunk thats likely gathered inside it. I can't replace the black paint inside the camera that was corroded off by the battery acid. The electronics may be dirty. I want to give it a bit of a once over and make it look nice and also make sure it lasts a while. I like this camera, I want to use it regularly.

but overall its a nice little camera. Very solid little thing. May need some advice. I can't get the plastic off to give it a proper clean up, partly because its gone brittle and partly because the adhesive that hasn't been destroyed by the acid is immensely strong. I don't want to destroy it, if I do destroy it I want to replace it. but I need that off to get to the screws that allow me to get inside the camera properly.

 

[compur]

The Ambi-Silette is entirely mechanical and uses no batteries.

BTW, this camera accepts interchangeable lenses. The one mounted in your photos is the 90mm telephoto. Agfa made several others for this camera. It's one of my favorite rangefinders.

 

[Hati]

I thought it looked odd when I looked inside it and didn't see a battery slot. I wonder why there was battery acid all over it and an ancient Duracell inside the case. so its purely mechanical? thats fantastic. I'll stick some film in it now its cleaned inside and see if it actually takes an image.

 

[ColRay]

Looks great!

 

[ktan7]

Looks awesome. Wonder how the picture turns out when you take them.