Lomography

The BELOMO Agat 18K is a tiny film camera with a plastic body, glass lens, and half frame mode, which means you are never able to finish the film loaded. Here is a review which contains my first impressions on this half-frame camera and also its basic technical details.

Photo via Larryhester.com

As with the previous reviews I’ve been writing, this is about a camera that just arrived home and came a single film loaded. What I want to convey in this review are my first impressions and the basic technical details of this camera.

Let’s start then with the BELOMO Agat-18K.

This camera came into my hands after I searched for half-frame cameras on eBay. All other cameras, such as the Olympus Pen and the Ricoh Auto-Half, ran away from my budget, which is usually within € 20-25 with shipping.

The camera, as I said, is a plastic “toy” camera, a very small one (95 × 60 × 45mm) with inner metal compartment. It comes with a very interesting lens (an Industar-104 28 mm and f2.8) and a half-frame function (72 exposures on a 36 exposure film). What made me decide to “test” it was the half-frame and the “theoretical” quality of the lens.

The shutter speed is set by the camera automatically, within a range that goes from 1/65 to 1/540 seconds. The lens aperture ranges from f2.8 to f16 and are set manually by the user, same with the ISO speed (between 25 ISO and 1600 ISO). The focus is also done manually, using one of the yellow rings that come with the lens. It goes between 0.9 m to infinity.

The camera comes with lens cap, perfectly integrated into the camera, covering the lens and the shutter button, and a basic camera strap.

Photos by srmarcus

The camera operation is very simple, as you can imagine: first, we set the ISO using the inner yellow ring of the lens, then we set the aperture using the next ring, marked with the numbers f / and symbols of speed. Finally, we set the distance by turning the lens (0.9 meters to infinity) and shoot. The hardest thing, of course, is knowing how to hold the camera and pull the trigger. Also, make sure that the lens cap does not get captured in the photo (take a look at the last photo).

Photos by srmarcus

I was surprised with the quality of the lens at 28mm (equivalent to 40mm in half-frame). Honestly, I expected worse results. The definition in the center is quite high, although it begins to distort as you move away towards the corners. The colors are also quite “real” in this album, taken using an Agfa Vista 200 film. The following review will feature a cross-processed film.

Information for this review were taken from Flickr Group on Agat 18K and Camera Manual on Shirleyman.com.