Bangsar view

View from Bangsar station in KL, taken with my Agfa Isolette 6×6. I liked the train system in Kuala Lumpur; it was efficient and there were often interesting outlooks.

Green Dress KL

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia   July ’08   Agfa Isolette   Kodak Portra 400 VC

This was near Masjid Jamek in the centre of KL. The film has a lot of humidity damage – small chunks of emulsion have come loose. You probably can’t see it on the small screen version. This was my first time to South East Asia & I had no idea how humid it was & what it could do to film. I was carrying my 120 film out of the sealed packs they are sold in & also spent two weeks in Hanoi where the humidity was extreme. In Hanoi I lost a few rolls of 35mm where the emulsion practically melted.

The Agfa Isolette is a medium format folding camera from approx the 1950s. It shoots a square 6×6 frame so there are 12 exposures on a roll of 120. There is no rangefinder so it is focus by estimate in meters. The viewfinder is above the lens & the framing is slightly inaccurate. Have to frame & then raise the camera slightly so the lens will cover what you saw in the viewfinder. For some reason I kept framing everything crooked, probably just need some more practice.

The camera is in excellent condition. It was given to me by a very kind man in the USA who had just done a CLA (clean, lubricate, adjust) on it. In fact he did this with about a dozen of these cameras & then gave them away via the APUG forum.