Agfa Isolette III - A Tribute

JPD said:

DcAnalogue, your Isolette photos are excellent and everyone of them deserve to be framed and even be in an exhibition. You have a great eye for composition! Very inspiring, to say the least. They are also a nice thumb's up for the simple Apotar triplet, that can take incredible photos in the hands of a good photographer.

Click to expand...

Apotar or in some cases Agnar are not bad lenses. I started to appreciate how Apotar/Agnar renders wide open and recently picked a nice Silette LK sensor and Optima 535 sensor though they are 35mm.

* I wish they design cameras like Silette LK sensor on these days

JPD said:

DcAnalogue, your Isolette photos are excellent and everyone of them deserve to be framed and even be in an exhibition. You have a great eye for composition! Very inspiring, to say the least. They are also a nice thumb's up for the simple Apotar triplet, that can take incredible photos in the hands of a good photographer.

Click to expand...

Thank you very much JPD for your kind words!
Soon I'll print some as I'm building (finally) my darkroom.....

Good Luck.

baachitraka said:

Good Luck.

Click to expand...

Thanks mate!

Durst is from your country. Try to find a nice 6x7 with a color head...

baachitraka said:

Durst is from your country. Try to find a nice 6x7 with a color head...

Click to expand...

Yep.... but actually is a bit difficult to find nice enlargers at good price on the 'Bay (and here in Rome too).... I'd check for a 6x9 with color head and maybe a friend will give a 4"x5" b/w too. We'll see how it goes....
Btw. I'm also going to contact print in Pt/Pd & Cyanotype...

I was GIVEN a clean Isolette III with 75mm f3.5 Solinar and Synchro-Compur by a Lady Camera Club member and it finally had the 'focus seize -up' so I had a look and with a very small screwdriver unscrewed the three around the focus ring and it came off then I could unscrew the front element. I found there were TWO glasses stuck together with a screw thread in between -- I had the idea to squirt some WD40 into a small dish and pick up some on a small child's paint brush and gently paint WD40 into the 'join' -- it went in by 'capillary action' then after leaving 3-5 minutes gently do an 'unscrewing action' and LO !! and BEHOLD !! the lens element MOVED apart --- I exercised it a few times then put it back -- it was easy to test with shutter open on Time and a small piece of ground glass in the film plane to see Infinity line-up and nearer focus line-up and all is well now -- the front cells move and focus is accurate !

Isolette III by Peter Elgar, on Flickr

pentaxpete said:

I was GIVEN a clean Isolette III with 75mm f3.5 Solinar and Synchro-Compur by a Lady Camera Club member and it finally had the 'focus seize -up' so I had a look and with a very small screwdriver unscrewed the three around the focus ring and it came off then I could unscrew the front element. I found there were TWO glasses stuck together with a screw thread in between -- I had the idea to squirt some WD40 into a small dish and pick up some on a small child's paint brush and gently paint WD40 into the 'join' -- it went in by 'capillary action' then after leaving 3-5 minutes gently do an 'unscrewing action' and LO !! and BEHOLD !! the lens element MOVED apart --- I exercised it a few times then put it back -- it was easy to test with shutter open on Time and a small piece of ground glass in the film plane to see Infinity line-up and nearer focus line-up and all is well now -- the front cells move and focus is accurate !
lette III by Peter Elgar, on Flickr

Click to expand...

I've read around that is better don't use WD40 on cameras, as it release some chemicals that can be dangerous for lenses or seals....

i have an Isolette III as well. it is a nice usable rangefinder, compact and light weight. Better than a baldix or bessa 6x6. But I also have the Zeiss Super Ikonta III, so the Isolette doesnt get much use. I will have to run a roll through the Isolette soon. It really is a nice camera.

I just ran my first roll through mine and developed it and I must say, I'm pleased!

This is a keeper camera for sure.

Pete, yours looks exactly like mine, and mine has the same frozen focus problem, so I think I'll give your method a try. I wonder if naphtha would work as well as WD-40?

cooltouch said:

Pete, yours looks exactly like mine, and mine has the same frozen focus problem, so I think I'll give your method a try. I wonder if naphtha would work as well as WD-40?

Click to expand...

Naphtha and lighter fluid are pretty much the same, but I always opt for naphtha since some lighter fluids have additives in their makeup. This is what I do to free front focusing threads. I take a hypodermic syringe with a little naphtha in it and set it aside in the ready. Then I use a hair dryer on high heat and aim it at the front of the lens only. Let the lens warm up for a couple of minutes and then try to rotate it. If it doesn't rotate give it another blast of hot air. Keep it up until you can move it back and forth. Never force it since you might strip the front bezel's retaining screws. Oh, if you do feel it turn make sure the lens and the bezel are turning together as a unit like it's suppose to. Now, while it's still warm and turning move the lens ti the closest focusing position and apply one to two drops of naphtha right behind the bezel and the front of the shutter. DO NOT FLOOD IT WITH NAPHTHA! Now, with the drops applied work it from INF. to the closest focusing distance several times. I like to do this when there is a baseball game or a program coming on TV that I want to watch. I then plop my fanny in the recliner and watch TV all the while moving the focusing from INF to near. Works for me!

No flooding! Ever! No!
All it does is loosening the dirt and grime and washes it into the shutter and gears and onto the aperture and shutter blades. Then, the oil and dirt is everywhere you don't want it where things could have been so easy. Just take out the parts of the shutter that need cleaning, clean them and put them back in. From my experience in servicing hundreds of leaf shutters, all other methods are not acceptable and even if something moves while cleaning or shortly after, things tend to go back to bad quickly. If it is done properly once, all is well.

Loosening the focusing helicoid can be done with nail polish remover with acetone, although I had success with acetone-free remover. The problem there can be, that the remover also removes the black paint on the back of the lenses which is supposed to keep stray light at bay. It also can remove the black paint on the name ring, this happened to my Solinar, the white paint of the name was not washed away.
It is best to apply the nail polish remover with a syringe and also, keep it slow. Add very little at a time, let it sit, try to move the lens, when and if it moves, try to take it apart and clean it completely, if not, use a little bit more, drop by drop it should start to move. The green Agfa grease is very nasty.
Also, I recommend taking the front two lenses out of the shutter assembly so they can be cleaned better.

WD-40 is he worst thing to use here, it creeps into everything and leaves an oily film over everything, mostly on parts where it does not belong.
Leaf shutters are designed to run dry, there are two parts in a dial set Compur that can do with a drop! of oil on one gear and a drop! of grease on two metal rods but it also runs perfectly without it.
Naphta or Reinigungsbenzin or lighter fluid is only good for loosening oil-based dirt so it can be removed easier, i used it with q-tips. Those are perfect for all parts of camera restoration.
Just be careful about the small hairs and lints that sometimes come off the tips.

anfenglin said:

No flooding! Ever! No!
All it does is loosening the dirt and grime and washes it into the shutter and gears and onto the aperture and shutter blades.

Click to expand...

This is a good example of why I bought my Isolette from Certo6 instead of doing the Ebay-roulette thing.

@anfenglin: nice advice.

Remove the shutter and lens elements and clean the individually.

The lens elements which were frozen I had put them in oven @125°C for 10 mins and try to remove it by gripping with goat leather.

Once removed and it is a bit of work to clean the green grease.

* I have an Isolette with Solinar but without bellows which I can give for some price for anyone who want to practise servicing.

I have flooded/flushed between 50 and 100 shutters with Naphtha and never once had a problem. A shutter is sometimes like a toilet and it has to be flushed more than once. I will never, ever use acetone on any of my cameras. Get just a little careless with acetone and it eats plastic, paint and leatherette. I knew a fellow that tried flushing his shutter blades with acetone. He then found out his shutter blades were made of a plastic like material. End of story!

That's why you use only the utmost care and only use on drop at a time. Why would you even flush a shutter with acetone?
Acetone is very aggressive, why not use lighter fluid? Non-metallic shutter blades don't like any fluids, I once had a shutter that wouldn't work, it turned out that the blades were made of some sort of cardboard or something and moisture made them swell up an so they would not move. Incredibly idiotic!
If you are careful, all is well.
I nowadays tend to take shutters apart partly and clean the parts individually. I once had a shutter in a Rolleicord that opened when cocking. The little lever underneath the cocking ring was gummed up and opened the blades when cocking, were it was supposed to glide out of the way. I would have never figured this out if I hadn't removed the ring from the shutter.
All I'm saying is: take care of these old shutters, they are not built any more and if they are gone, they are gone. Finding a fitting shutter second hand is nigh on impossible.
Enough shutters have died already in the hands of useless "repair people".

anfenglin said:

That's why you use only the utmost care and only use on drop at a time. Why would you even flush a shutter with acetone?
Acetone is very aggressive, why not use lighter fluid? Non-metallic shutter blades don't like any fluids, I once had a shutter that wouldn't work, it turned out that the blades were made of some sort of cardboard or something and moisture made them swell up an so they would not move. Incredibly idiotic!
If you are careful, all is well.
I nowadays tend to take shutters apart partly and clean the parts individually. I once had a shutter in a Rolleicord that opened when cocking. The little lever underneath the cocking ring was gummed up and opened the blades when cocking, were it was supposed to glide out of the way. I would have never figured this out if I hadn't removed the ring from the shutter.
All I'm saying is: take care of these old shutters, they are not built any more and if they are gone, they are gone. Finding a fitting shutter second hand is nigh on impossible.
Enough shutters have died already in the hands of useless "repair people".

Click to expand...

Yes, I agree 100% with what you are saying. I usually use the "step process" when working on old shutters. Step 1. is to remove front and rear elements and do several flushes with Naphtha(lighter fluid without additives). and if that doesn't work I go to step two. Step 2. is to remove the front bezel from the shutter and go from there. Step 3. is to determine how much time I'm going to spend on said shutter. That is determined by how common the shutter is and how much money they go for in say a parts camera. Sometimes it is just not worth the time an effort to fix something that is worth $5.00 or 10.00 dollars. When I was younger I would spend hours on something that was of that value, but now that I'm above 65yrs old I'm running out of that time.

Bought one Isolette II at the moment on
Ebay.

Hope it will be in fine condition - as on
the photos.


with regards

You may need to replace bellows, the focus might have frozen and most probably the shutter is sticky if it is not Prontor.

Better bet for good bellows would be Zeiss Ikontas or Nettars but no guarantee for the shutters.

I just bought a I and a III, both train wrecks, but the I had decent bellows. Now the 1 is a nice, foldable pinhole with a shutter and film transport - literally a "jeans pocket pinhole", and the III is up and running with the bellows from the I.

I found that no chemical in my arsenal (lighter fluid, 99% iso, and white gas) would loosen either lens - even a week of soaking in iso. It took heating them in the oven.

The RF in the III was stuck solid as well - I touched a soldering iron to the metal threaded post and slowly freed it up. Once apart, the green grease cleans right out. I just used a tiny, tiny dab of brake grease to lube things up again.

The shutter in the III was stuck almost solid. I carefully pulled the front plate, took it outdoors, and, flushed it multiple times with white gas, which seems to be excellent for this sort of thing. I made sure to get any possible dirt and crap out of it.

It runs now, but the speeds are about exactly half - I tested by filming the shutter with a 120fps video camera and counting the frames. I like the camera so much, I'd really consider sending the shutter off to be serviced if someone knew how to get it accurate again.

Here's the pair:

What's white gas?

anfenglin said:

What's white gas?

Click to expand...

Coleman fuel is one variant (camping fuel). It seems to evaporate with nothing left behind, but the fumes are insanely explosive. I wouldn't use it much indoors.

An Apugger with lots of repair experience talked me through a shutter rebuild some time ago and suggested it as the best cleaner he knew of. And I have like 1,000 Indian Guides campouts behind me...

M Carter said:

I just bought a I and a III, both train wrecks, but the I had decent bellows. Now the 1 is a nice, foldable pinhole with a shutter and film transport - literally a "jeans pocket pinhole", and the III is up and running with the bellows from the I.

I found that no chemical in my arsenal (lighter fluid, 99% iso, and white gas) would loosen either lens - even a week of soaking in iso. It took heating them in the oven.

The RF in the III was stuck solid as well - I touched a soldering iron to the metal threaded post and slowly freed it up. Once apart, the green grease cleans right out. I just used a tiny, tiny dab of brake grease to lube things up again.

Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to post your experiences. I hve an Agfa Isolette III that has the frozen lens and rangefinder, like yours, and since mine is in minty condition with a good bellows, I've been kinda slow doing anything with it. Alll I've done so far is take the lens loose from the front standard. Just so I understand what you did -- you used heat to free up the III's lens, then you flushed it with white gas, correct? I dunno if I want to mess with white gas. I'm thinking that, after freeing things up, I can flush it with naphtha, then lube it and hopefully be done with its maintenance for a couple of decades.

What temperature setting did you set your oven to for this?

cooltouch said:

Thanks for taking the time to post your experiences. I hve an Agfa Isolette III that has the frozen lens and rangefinder, like yours, and since mine is in minty condition with a good bellows, I've been kinda slow doing anything with it. Alll I've done so far is take the lens loose from the front standard. Just so I understand what you did -- you used heat to free up the III's lens, then you flushed it with white gas, correct? I dunno if I want to mess with white gas. I'm thinking that, after freeing things up, I can flush it with naphtha, then lube it and hopefully be done with its maintenance for a couple of decades.

What temperature setting did you set your oven to for this?

Click to expand...

I removed the focus ring (three screws, don't take them all the way out), and unscrewed the lens group, which was stuck together.

I set the oven to 200°f, and put the lens group in a small metal pie plate and put it in the oven. Once the oven got up to temp, I turned it off and let the group sit in there for 10 minutes or so. Of the 2 cameras, one of them unscrewed right away with leather work gloves. The other one still wouldn't budge. I wrapped the focus-end in several layers of blue tape, and also the shutter threads, and stuck a 3/4" pipe clamp on each end and re-heated - once it warmed up, I had to tighten the clamps and then heated some more. They gave me enough grip to get it open. But - I think the clamps made something a hair out-of-round, I can feel it when I focus, but it works fine. So maybe heat and patience. Heat (the soldering iron) worked on the RF focus knob as well, when no solvent would do it. if you have a III, there's a mirror on a spring in the RF box which pivots on a post - you want to remove the mirror and clean and lube the pivot. Mine now focuses like butter.

I removed the shutter from the bellows (spanner wrench required). There's a half-circle screw that blocks a really thin shim from turning - the shim is the nut for the shutter cover. If you don't know how to take the whole shutter apart, don't work the shutter with the cover off! The main arm-thing will leap out and you'll have to suss out how it interconnects with the other components. You can lift the cover off, and then you can soak it in a dish of solvent and then really flush the shutter (I used a small squirt bottle to really hose it down), put the cover back on and exercise it (there are spots you can hold the cover down and keep your fingers clear of moving parts that stick out of the cover), "rinse and repeat". Then let it dry.

I had plenty of white gas around - it's used in camp stoves and lanterns, and it's no more dangerous than lighter fluid I'd imagine, as far as your skin goes (wear some rubber gloves with either, at the least you'll have some really dry skin with either product!) The white gas is designed to really burn when vaporized, so I didn't fool around with it indoors in my small repair area (with a hot water heater and pilot light nearby). Outdoors, no issue. I unstuck a Mamiya RB shutter with it and it worked great - dropped the shutter in a dish of white gas, turned my back to go wait, and heard "CLICK" - the shutter had opened almost instantly. Doesn't mess with any painted parts in my experience.

When I reassembled, I used a tiny bit of brake grease to lube the focus threads - like a couple swiped with a toothpick, and worked it around with a small rag. I used a link I'd found to collimate the lens - you set the lens to infinity, tape or mylar on the film plane with a sharpie cross in the middle and a light source behind. Then aim another camera right into the Isolette lens, set to infinity, almost touching glass-to-glass. Look through the 2nd camera's VF and adjust the focus on the isolette - when the mark on the tape becomes sharp, it's collimated and you install and tighten the focus ring (I used an RB for the big focusing screen and it made it easy to adjust the Isolette while looking down into the WLF).

I also put tiny drops of lube on the shutter cocking linkage - I used brass instrument valve oil and wiped it up after getting it in the pivot points - they're just stamped steel and rivets.

The Apotar lens in mine turns out to be a nice performer for B&W anyway, it's a very cool little camera and the RF is nice - not linked to the lens but better than guessing.