Agfa Box

Agfa Synchro Box (Box 600)

The Agfa Synchro Box is a puristic and simple type of camera with a fixed focus single-element lens, one shutter speed (1/30) and two f-stops (f/11 and f/16). The camera arrived via ebay in a very good condition with hardly any signs of corrosion and paint chipping. But the viewfinders were extremely cloudy. After removing the top plate and cleaning their lenses and steel reflectors, they became again brilliant finders and the camera is now in good working condition.

The concept of box cameras was already introduced in 1888 by Eastman Kodak for marketing the newly developed roll film. The Kodak Nr. 1 was launched with the advertising slogan “You press the button and we do the rest” which was the beginning of mass photography. After exposing 100 frames the camera was returned to the producer who developed the negatives, printed contact sheets and reloaded the film for sending it back to the customer.

In 1930 Agfa Camerawerk AG Munich started offering a series of box cameras with the Agfa Synchro Box as the latest version which was produced until 1957. The Agfa Synchro Box is a durable simple camera for absolute beginners and uses the common 120 film rolls delivering 8 frames per roll in the format 6 x 9 cm which normally were used for contact prints.

The film loading is done via a removable cone magazine. The lens is a single-element fixed focus meniscus lens (monocle) with a minimal distance of about 3 m. The focal length of the lens is 105mm which corresponds roughly to a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera. The camera has a very simple shutter that is cocked and released in one movement of the shutter release button. It is a self-cocking simple spring rotary shutter with a sliding aperture disc. There is only one shutter speed (plus bulb) available that delivers an exposure time of around 1/30 second. An extractable aperture selector allows to choose between the two apertures f/11 and f/16. A third position of this selector enables to combine f/11 with a yellow filter, equating to f/16 due to the loss of light from the filter. These are the specifications commonly mentioned. But some sources report on different aperture and shutter speed values, ranging from f/8 to f/22 for the higher and lower aperture value and 1/25 to 1/60 second for the exposure time.

Two tripod sockets (one for horizontal framing and one for portrait framing) and a socket for a cable release (at the corner below the shutter release) are very helpful for using a tripod to avoid camera shaking – a marginal problem for the small contact prints of the past. Finally, there are two simple built-in brilliant finders with polished steel reflectors, one for horizontal format, one for vertical format. The synchro in the camera name means there is a sync socket for a flash. Dimensions of the camera: 84 × 102 × 125 mm, weight: 410 g.

The camera was designed for applying the sunny 16 rule, a method of estimating correct daylight exposure without a light meter. The basic rule is: On a sunny day set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the ISO film speed for a subject in direct sunlight. For correct exposure under the conditions of bright sunlight the f/16 position of the aperture lever and an ASA 50 film (corresponding to the fixed shutter speed of 1/30 – 1/50 second) meet the rule. For an overcast sky we have to select a 400 ISO film or the f/11 position.

What about the image quality? A poorly corrected and uncoated meniscus lens cannot be expected to give perfectly sharp images. Decent sharpness is only found in the center of the image and the borders (particularly the corners) are pretty soft. Adjusting f/16 increases the general sharpness of the image significantly. With the unsharp outer zones the viewer’s eye is focused for the mid zones and the surrounding part just adds a kind of blurring vignette to the picture – quite different from the bokeh look caused by a small depth of field.

Sample pictures