Agilux Agifold III - British 6x6 Folding Camera

DcAnalogue · Sep 30, 2016

Hi guys & gals!

I particularly love MF folding cameras and every now and then I buy one which fashinated me when surfing the (analog) web....
This time I got a very nice sample of British pride: the Agilux Agifold III. It's a 6x6 folding, with uncoupled rangefinder and extinctin (not working) meter.

Images came out sharp and nice and using it was very pleasant. I used Ilford Superpan 200 (but had problem with this film) and Kodak Tri-x @ box speed and souped in HC110 [H].
Btw. I used it with a (british) Weston Master III meter too....

More on my Film Blog

xya · Sep 30, 2016

That's a very nice camera. I could not put my hands on one for a reasonable price for my 120 folders website.

But are you sure that the extinction meter doesn't work? They seem to be indestructable. You have to direct the meter towards your subject and look into the eyepiece from a distance between 20 - 30 cm. This distance is important, do not put it near to your eye. There are numbers showing. You take the lowest number you can read. On other extiction meters there is a scale on top. On these scales there are often three scenes, indoor, cloudy and sunny with some DIN/ISO settings each. Put the according point on the scale to the number you read and it will show you the shutter/aperture combinations. It's a guess, but maybe better than nothing. For me it works quite often.

DcAnalogue · Sep 30, 2016

xya said:
That's a very nice camera. I could not put my hands on one for a reasonable price for my 120 folders website.

But are you sure that the extinction meter doesn't work? They seem to be indestructable. You have to direct the meter towards your subject and look into the eyepiece from a distance between 20 - 30 cm. This distance is important, do not put it near to your eye. There are numbers showing. You take the lowest number you can read. On other extiction meters there is a scale on top. On these scales there are often three scenes, indoor, cloudy and sunny with some DIN/ISO settings each. Put the according point on the scale to the number you read and it will show you the shutter/aperture combinations. It's a guess, but maybe better than nothing. For me it works quite often.

Hi,
thanks for your infos.... as I said in my blog.... maybe I've not be able to make it work.... i.e. I don't see the numbers in the (very little) window near the viewfinder.... I've the manual of model II which is quite different and has a bigger window for the meter....

benjiboy · Sep 30, 2016

They were made by the Aeronautical And General Instruments Company in Croydon U.K and were very good quality. The company still exists and still manufactures a wide range of instruments and systems, for the Defence and Civil markets in Poole Dorset U.K, but not cameras any more.

moto-uno · Sep 30, 2016

Gotta laugh , I just noticed the tee shirt in the second photo ! Peter

DcAnalogue · Oct 1, 2016

moto-uno said:
Gotta laugh , I just noticed the tee shirt in the second photo ! Peter

Ahahah... that's (almost) why I took this shot.....

pentaxpete · Oct 1, 2016

Thank The Lord SOME-One buys British !! We can do with the money !

John Wiegerink · Oct 1, 2016

pentaxpete said:
Thank The Lord SOME-One buys British !! We can do with the money !

It's getting hard to find anything "Made in America" anymore on this side of the pond. Almost all China with a little Taiwan, Vietnam, Pakistan, and India thrown in. Do you have much "Made in England" or even "Made in America" products or is it China, China, China there too? The Brits made some of the finest cameras and lenses you could buy a few years back. Ah, the good old days!

benjiboy · Oct 4, 2016

John Wiegerink said:
It's getting hard to find anything "Made in America" anymore on this side of the pond. Almost all China with a little Taiwan, Vietnam, Pakistan, and India thrown in. Do you have much "Made in England" or even "Made in America" products or is it China, China, China there too? The Brits made some of the finest cameras and lenses you could buy a few years back. Ah, the good old days!

It's a global economy nowadays and if the U.K and the U.S and other Western countries can't compete in the capitalist system they are going to go down, because putting racial prejudice aside I have never bought any item manufactured in the Far East that wasn't as least as good as ones made in the West, many of them better and cheaper, you have to face the facts.
I'm old enough to remember when people in the West used to consider Japanese products inferior but they soon found out to the contrary, What Western country ever produced a Nikon F2, or a Canon F1 ?

John Wiegerink · Oct 4, 2016

benjiboy said:
It's a global economy nowadays and if the U.K and the U.S and other Western countries can't compete in the capitalist system they are going to go down, because putting racial prejudice aside I have never bought any item manufactured in the Far East that wasn't as least as good as ones made in the West, many of them better and cheaper, you have to face the facts.
I'm old enough to remember when people in the West used to consider Japanese products inferior but they soon found out to the contrary, What Western country ever produced a Nikon F2, or a Canon F1 ?

Yes, I'm that old too. I remember the Japanese products that I saw come into the USA after WWII and it was mainly toys, like small silk winged hand launched airplanes(I threw many of those as a kid), wind-up friction toys like army tanks(I had one of those too) and some dolls, etc. The Japanese were very good at taking something apart and then figuring out what would make it work better. They didn't invent much, but they sure did refine products. We had a ton of animosity toward the Japanese and their products in my neck of the woods after WWII. Many veterans of the war refused to buy anything Japanese. Heck, I remember my father wouldn't even eat rice. Things started changing in the 70's as some of the "old guard" started dying off or became a little more mellowed. Now buying something made in Japan is bragging rites.

benjiboy · Oct 4, 2016

John Wiegerink said:
Yes, I'm that old too. I remember the Japanese products that I saw come into the USA after WWII and it was mainly toys, like small silk winged hand launched airplanes(I threw many of those as a kid), wind-up friction toys like army tanks(I had one of those too) and some dolls, etc. The Japanese were very good at taking something apart and then figuring out what would make it work better. They didn't invent much, but they sure did refine products. We had a ton of animosity toward the Japanese and their products in my neck of the woods after WWII. Many veterans of the war refused to buy anything Japanese. Heck, I remember my father wouldn't even eat rice. Things started changing in the 70's as some of the "old guard" started dying off or became a little more mellowed. Now buying something made in Japan is bragging rites.

My dad fought the Japanese Imperial Army in Burma in the British 14th Army and also refused to buy anything Japanese, and used to say things like "the Japanese soldiers were used to jungle warfare they could practice at home ( there is no jungle in Japan they actually did their jungle warfare training in Formosa where there is tropical rain forest hunting down the local population) they could live on a hand full of rice for a day" and a lot of other thing that it wouldn't be acceptable for me to repeat on this forum.
Since WW11 the U.S.A.put a tremendous amount of money and technical know how in design in manufacturing techniques into the Japanese economy which helped cause their economic miracle, there is also a long tradition of superb craftsmanship in Japan in many fields.

Agilux Agifold III - British 6x6 Folding Camera

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