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Yes… this is it, an Agiflash 44. As a 10 year old I had one of these… second hand of course, as it belonged to my Dad and was probably his first camera too! Googling the camera name tells me it was made from 1959-64 in Croydon of all places.

By 1980, when I first used the camera, it was taking fast obsolete 127 film which had quite large 4cm x 4cm negatives. Much of the time I only had 12 exposure colour film, mainly because it was quite expensive. Although the camera had a little lever on the front so both black & white or colour film could be used.

A friend of my Dad’s who was a bus enthusiast, offered to take me on a “bus trip” around depots in north Nottinghamshire. Having just been given the camera I was really keen to try it out. Some of resulting photos were not too bad from the Agiflash on that trip, although the rubber camera case around it posed a bit of a problem. The triangular shaped flap on the cover got into shot on about half of the photos I took… and one shot was ruined by someone walking in front of me. Still, it was a big adventure at the time and it was like Christmas when the prints came back from the processors.

Here’s a selection of the photos I still have from that trip… don’t forget that I was only 10 years old when I took them!

This last photo, was one of those affected by the phantom camera flap problem… A few years ago I photoshopped out the resulting black triangle, with mixed results. Still, I feel I have to rescue a photo when I can!

Later on the wind on mechanism gave up the ghost, so my Dad drilled a hole in the top of the alloy casing and fitted a small aluminum tube with a groove in the end which lined up with the film spool. So the exposures were wound on by turning this tube and looking at the little red window on the back to line up the film number in it.