AGFA Ambiflex - I'm in love, but the lenses... are they still available?

Hello friends,

during my silence here I've got many interesting things to ask about - one of those is AGFA Ambiflex, a monster chrome SLR with leaf shutter. I've managed to clean and repair it, and I'm really in love - in spite of its enormous weight It came with 2.8/50 Color-Solinar, a very nice Tessar-clone lens... but I'm now in need of other lenses... are they still floating sometimes, or this camera along with its bayonet mount is already long forgotten? I really want to shoot sometimes with it

Cheers, Zhenya

Yes, you can get lenses for it, generally from eBay. I have also seen them online at a number of classic camera dealers. They are usually not terribly expensive.

I don't have any personal experience with the lenses, but I am guessing that they must have been well-regarded - because there is an eBay seller who makes a converter to mount the Ambiflex lenses on a Canon EOS body. I can't imagine someone wanting to do that unless they lenses have some exceptional quality that a person would want to maintain.

Good luck with your camera!

Zhenya, you make me feel old, the last time I saw an Agfa Ambiflex was in a camera shop window for sale new !

Hello Wigwam,

your words sound quite promising - I would be very glad to have at least 135 and 35 mm lenses for my Ambiflex Our own KMZ plant made the lenses alike, for Zenit 5 and 6 cameras - with bayonet Z... I doubt that they would really fit Ambiflex

The main issue with online dealers and Ebay for me is that I can't use a credit card to pay - Russian cards are not acepted anywhere So I have first to find the lens somewhere, then I should ask one of my foreign friends to receive my money for it through Western Union, and to buy and send the lens to me A difficult way, yet a working one.

I would be very thankful if you could drop me a line when you see somewhere Ambiflex glass - I am really in love with that old beast

Cheers,
Zhenya

Wigwam Jones said:

Yes, you can get lenses for it, generally from eBay. I have also seen them online at a number of classic camera dealers. They are usually not terribly expensive.

I don't have any personal experience with the lenses, but I am guessing that they must have been well-regarded - because there is an eBay seller who makes a converter to mount the Ambiflex lenses on a Canon EOS body. I can't imagine someone wanting to do that unless they lenses have some exceptional quality that a person would want to maintain.

Good luck with your camera!

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I wish I were living in those times... and preferably not in USSR

Bentley Boyd said:

Zhenya, you make me feel old, the last time I saw an Agfa Ambiflex was in a camera shop window for sale new !

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Hi Zhenya,
I have an Ambiflex with the 50mm, 35mm and 135mm lenses which I was lucky to buy as an outfit. The quality of them all is excellent and they are worth persuing.
The lenses do however suffer from sluggish diapraghms if not used frequently so get out and keep shooting!
I have seen the lenses turn up on ebay from time to time but not often. The up side is that they are really reasonably priced as collectors haven't yet discovered Agfa cameras.
Cheers, Tony