As my mom ages, I’m coming into possession of more and more photography hand-me-downs. This is a PB 20 Readyset by a company called Agfa, and it’s a hand-held portable camera complete with a bellows.
I don’t know too much about it yet, but it bears a striking resemblance to the Camera Obscura from Fatal Frame, which makes my wife real happy, as she’s enamored with that series.
I will likely never shoot with this, because I’m not sure the film is being made, but it’s such a cool piece of kit. It’s so well-built.
Thanks for seeing this amazing camera!
Agfa still exists today, although the consumer film business was spun off into a separate company called AgfaPhoto but they just license the name to other manufacturers. It was mostly successful in Europe. I’ve never heard of this 620 film it uses; looks like you can use 120 film if you respool it onto the 620 spools, or there may be a Chinese company still making 620 film. But it would take some extra effort to acquire or modify film to work with this camera. It’s a beautiful piece, though!
I found it quite funny to read "some company called Agfa", when Agfa was one of the giants of the photography world. Even today, their revenue exceeds a billion, and at its peak, the three big major companies manufacturing film were Kodak, Fuji and (you guessed it) Agfa.
Today, even AgfaPhoto is no longer a thing and Agfa doesn't make consumer goods any longer, it's all B2B.
I should have been more thorough in my research, rather than rushing to show Lemmy, my bad.
Nah, not at all. It was just an odd / funny moment for me personally, having shot a lot of Agfa film when it was still a thing.
I appreciate your content and actually hope you'll think about shooting something on that old Agfa again.
AliExpress has it at like $15 for 5 rolls, don't know if it's any good but I mean, for $15 just give it a shot.