Nickfed said:
Pretty wierd. The ad shows two different cameras. The top picture is like nothing I have seen, with one button on the body. The lower ones show an early 50s Isolette w/ f4.5 Agnar and Compur Rapid to 1/500 exactly the same as mine.
That got me intrigued, Nickfed! As Solinar notes, this is not the brightest seller - a quick google shows that the top picture is actually an Isolette V, "borrowed" from a Scandinavian site -
http://www.minhembio.com/Zark/51760/ , whilst the text is lifted from Roland and Caroline -
http://www.rolandandcaroline.co.uk/isolettei/isolettei.html . As the latter is described as an FSU enthusiast, the seller must have made 2+2=5.
Paul, my Iskra has leaky bellows and pathetically I've yet to try a film to see if the wind-on works, and thus if replacement is worthwhile. But they are gorgeous cameras....
Incidentally, I bought a beautiful, near mint Isolette L, with an accurate meter. It came from a neighbour and had a good provenance, as her father, a merchant seaman, had bought it in Hamburg in 1961. He was so taken with photography that the next year he bought a Praktica and the camera had languished unused ever since. I wonder, Jay, if the Isolettes from the USSR followed a similar route? They must have been almost valueless in the west after the early 60s, but might have had some cachet as souvenirs and a "real German camera"?
Anyway, I had new bellows and a service from Certo 6, only to be deeply disappointed by the mediocrity of the Apotar 4.5. I wonder if something is not quite right... as usual!
Cheers, Ian
