AGFA Ambi Silette (1957-8)

[titrisol]

Finally find the courage to open the top and fix that RF. It was only good between 1 and 3m and then it was a crapshot.
Chris Sherlock videos plus the service manual had enough info and everything seemed OK, but the RF unit was returning to the infinity (resting) very slowly or not at all.
I wanted to avoid opening the top, as the parallax correction and framelines seem to be finicky.

The RF works from the bottom and is something like this

I moved the arm many times and it was not helping.
I used a drop of cleaner in the pivot and that seemed to lose the mechanism, cleaned all residue and let it dry. It was a bit better but not great
I repeated the treatment a few times until it was fine once dry (~24h between treatments)
I used a bit of teflon-doped oil in the pivot and it'd been fine for a few days.

The Silver arm with the long spring is the driver of the RF.

Compurs are easy to maintain, the type I was working but 1 was sluggish. I cleaned and lubed that shutter and is within 1/3 stop
Type II, needs a cleaning, and RF adjustment. I'll do that in the wintertime

Luckily LearnCameraRepair has the Ambi Silette parts and service manual which helped me a lot

[PFMcFarland]

It's a good simple design though complicated by the fact they used the same body shell from the older Silette cameras. It's never really cut-and-dry with the German manufacturers when it comes to the internal mechanicals.

PF

[titrisol]

It's a good simple design though complicated by the fact they used the same body shell from the older Silette cameras. It's never really cut-and-dry with the German manufacturers when it comes to the internal mechanicals.

PF

Luckily the arm pivot is a shallow hole and cant contaminate the optics so using ronsonol/solvent was easy

[melek]

Love this review! I have the earlier version. I think that I might have bought the camera + 50mm lens and then the wide angle, telephoto and later the 130mm lens. This is a somewhat heavy kit, and Agfa did a great job with this camera.