Isoflash-Rapid
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| Agfa IsoFlash-Rapid image by Dan Heil (Image rights) |
Preliminary, in work. borrowed from Isomat mackdan
The Isoflash Rapid is one of Agfa's series of squared-off, largely plastic, "Iso" cameras made for their easy-loading Rapid film system from the 1960s.
The Isoflash Rapid is one of Agfa's simple fixed-focus Rapid models like the Iso-Rapid I; and like those, it gives 16 square exposures of 24×24 mm per roll. The lens is a Isinar lens labeled "Made in Germany". The shutter only has two settings, "sunny" and "shade/cloudy/flash". The
Interlocks only allow the shutter to fire with the back closed, and film in the camera. T
Normal operation aspects
features
Speed indexing
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| Black-nameplate version image by Voxphoto (Image rights) |
The Isoflash Rapid does not use the emulsion-speed index tab aspect of the Agfa Rapid film cassettes
. Whenever a photographer purchased a fresh roll of Agfa Rapid film, it would come loaded into a cassette with a tab encoding the appropriate film speed. This allowed a suitably-equipped Rapid camera to adjust its meter readings accordingly. The indexing key is a silver metal plate affixed to the side of the cassette, whose central tab is shorter for slow films and longer for fast ones. (Empty cassettes of any speed could be used in the film take-up compartment. Rapid rolls had the emulsion type punched into the loose tail of the film to remind the photographer which kind had just been shot.)
Rapid loads were standard perforated 35mm film, so today's photographer does not find it too daunting to reload empty Rapid cassettes in a darkroom; but the speed-index system does create the extra headache of locating (or modifying) cassettes for the correct tab length.
Links
- Multi-lingual manual at Mike Butkus' OrphanCameras.com
- Isomat Rapid at Sylvain Halgand's www.collection-appareils.fr (in French)
