“It’s not how big the house is, it’s how happy the home is.” ~ TinyBuddha
In the past, when asked, I’ve said my first camera was a Pentax. That was my first personal camera. The camera I grew up with, however, was my mother’s Agfa Optima I. She picked it up when she and dad lived in Germany from 1963-65. Though the Optima I was manufactured in 1960, I believe mom said she bought it new soon after they arrived in ’63, which makes sense because the Optima II was the newest model by then so she would have gotten a very good deal on the older model. And Army soldiers, even paratroopers, didn’t make much in those days. In any case, we used the camera a lot when I was a kid and it is partly why I came to love photography. It finally came to live with me last year when mom and dad moved next door. I did some digging and learned that Agfa, short for Aktiengesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation (good luck with that), was established in 1867. They first manufactured photo chemicals and film, eventually merging with BASF and Bayer, together known as IG Farben. Ansco was the American model. World War II didn’t go so well for IG Farben companies as they produced chemicals used for the gas chambers. The Allies dissolved the company because of Nazi involvement, and Agfa reemerged as a stand alone company once more in 1952. By 1959 their first model camera – the Optima – was produced. At least that’s the earliest model I can find. It’s possible they were manufacturing cameras prior to this. The Optima was one of the first mass produced cameras to have an automatic exposure system (Kodak had the other model of course). Naturally, a series of models followed, and they continued being produced into the 1980’s. Agfa tried their hand at digital cameras in the 1990’s, but the company was bankrupt by 2004. Today, they license the Agfa name to other companies to produce photo products. You can read more details about Agfa here. What an interesting, albeit sad, legacy for such a long lived, successful company. Tragedy aside, I have always loved mom’s Optima I. It has meant a lot to our family over the last 50+ years. I look forward to my life settling down a little bit in coming months, finding some old fashioned film I’ve got squirreled away somewhere in this house, and taking the ‘ol gal for a spin. She’s too beautiful to leave on a shelf. Fun fact: Mom – with me in the oven – came back to the states at the end of ’64, and dad returned in late ’65. So, you see, both the Optima I and I were made in Germany. Just another reason to love it so.
january 11, 2023 – the outhouse: where art goes
[…] in the center of the throw caught my attention, and I broke into a smile wide as the Danube. In April 2020, I wrote about this particular model. My mother bought this camera in Germany when she and dad were […]