Agfa Optima

The Optima is a family of 35mm cameras made by Agfa in the 1960s and beyond.

The original Optima was in 1959 the first manufactured camera with programmed exposure, obtained by a selenium-meter driven mechanical system. Moving its shutter release lever halfway down triggers a mechanical system that obtains aperture value and speed from the electromechanical part of the meter. The system mirrors a green or a red signal into the viewfinder when the camera catches appropriate exposure settings from the meter or not. The does not require any batteries Template:Citation-needed. As camera with fully automatic exposure it was only preceded by a handcrafted model of Kodak in the 1930s. The Paxette electromatic of 1959 may have appeared at the same time as the Agfa Optima, but it was a simpler camera with just automatic aperture.

The Optima had the 'shutter lever' on the left (facing away from the operator). The lever was not for the shutter, but to operate the auto exposure, you have a button on the top to fire the shutter. There is also a wheel on the bottom right that opens or closes the flash connection aperture. When the flash aperture is closed, the auto exposure lever will not function. The camera also had a wheel on the top that could be set to the film value (ASA or DIN).

Models[]

Optima (original) (1959)
Optima I (1960)
Optima Ia (1962)
Optima II (1962)
Optima II S (1962)
Optima III (1960)
Optima III S (1961)
Optima 500 S (1963
Optima 500 (1964)
Optima 500 SN (1966)
Optima Reflex (1960)

The Optima name was continued with the Optima Sensor range.

Agfa Optima

Models[]

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