vito prontor svs shutter repair manual free download pdf

The date was 13 July 1963 and I suspect I bought the camera with the money I received for my birthday a few days before. It was here, on the sixth floor, where I worked as a motor cycle journalist Fifty years ago Dorset House in Stamford Street, near Waterloo, was a hotbed of technical magazine publishing in the 1960s. Not discouraged, I turned to a stack of bank files from the 1960s (my loft is a wondrous place with everything catalogued in Bento) and soon found the statement showing the cheque I had issued to pay for the camera. It might have given a clue to the specification. A few years ago I saw the original receipt and put it “somewhere safe”. Trouble is, I cannot remember which model I am looking for. I decided to track down an Agfa identical to the one I bought back in the sixties. One has a 45mm lens, the other a 50mm, both with a fast-for-the-day maximum aperture of f/2.8. This is all nostalgia, but it is a revelation to see how well built and durable these Agfa fixed-lens cameras are. The lens is a 50mm f/2.8 Agfa Color-Solinar and the shutter is a Compur-Rapid with a fast 1/500s maximum Nostalgia This more advanced Silette, made around the same time, has a second light window to power the bright-line viewfinder. Since then I have picked up another version, also made around 1958, in near mint condition.

This particular example was older than mine (which I remember had a built-in light meter) but it was a snip at £15. I was reminded that my first proper photographic tool was a Silette, one of a long-running range of precision cameras made between 1953 and the early 70s. Two weeks ago, at the photo fair at the Royal Horticultural Hall in Victoria, I came across a good example of an Agfa Silette 35mm camera.

Manufactured around 1958, this camera has a 45mm f/2.8 Agfa Color Apotar lens and a Prontor-SVS shutter, maximum speed 1/300s. Originally published on MacFilos on The £15 Agfa Silette from the photo fair. I covered this in detail back in 2013 and I thought current readers (there are a lot more of you now than there were then) would welcome a replay. John Shingleton’s reminiscences of the day of Winston Churchill’s funeral and his mention of the camera he used on that day prompted me to mention the camera I owned at that time - an Agfa Silette which I had bought three years previously in 1963. Delicious pickings at the Royal Horticultural Hall photo fair in London, 2016

Vito prontor svs shutter repair manual free download pdf