Agfa Optima 500

[mawilliams]

Picked this little guy for almost nothing and I'm trying to figure out where (and if) it uses a battery. It's not a pure rangefinder, really, but close enough I thought maybe someone here could help? It uses an "A" mode to calculate exposure and I just can't imagine it doesn't use a battery to do that, unless it posesses some sort of photo-cell located on the front. It has a nice little German lens on it and I really would love to shoot some film with it! I found the manual which speaks of a little green light coming on in the viewfinder when it is ready to shoot, and having tried it against daylight with my ASA set to 200, I got nothing. Any ideas? Must be a battery in there somewhere...maybe not? Thanks for anyone able to dig up dirt on this obscure little camera.

 

[petronius]

If your 500 has a selenium cell and nothing happens in A mode you probably have a dead meter. The newer version of the 500 has a small round meter cell beside the finder and this model needs a battery.

These two have selenium meters:

This one needs a Mallory PX13 or PX625 battery:

 

[mawilliams]

Thank you for the reply Petronius - I do have the older version, so I guess I'm out of luck. Although, I know a lot of these older automatic cameras sometimes default to a set shutter speed - like 1/60 - when the meter isn't working - maybe I'll expermient with my handheld incident meter and try and roughly figure it out using a grey card. If I can have some idea of what F stop and exposure it uses by default (if that's even the case, which it might not be) then I could shoot a forgiving negative film like Tri-X and push/pull up to 3 or 4 stops to correct - maybe a project for when I'm really bored 🙂 Thanks for the input!

 

[petronius]

You are right, 1/60 might be the time when the camera is set to flash mode. I once tried to convert a Optima 500S to manual mode, but I failed. Have fun and good luck!

 

[mawilliams]

Okay folks - just to bring some closure to this little thread - I discovered through testing that this camera, with the meter dead, does indeed default to 1/60 and is right around F8. So knowing that, I can shoot the appropriate ASA for a given light, and push or pull the film to affect up to three stops if need be. Here's a test shot from my porch to give you an idea of what the lens is capable of. God bless those Germans - a fine little lens! Even with crap film and a low res scan, I can see individual grains of snow when I zoom in PS. So I'm thrilled. A good yard sale find. Thanks for the input again, Petronius.