A few weeks ago an outlet box from Camera Rescue in Finland arrived containing two cameras. One was a 1924 Zeiss Ica Ideal 225 that I pulled apart for the lens (the Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 135mm f/4.5 became the heart of my new 4x5 setup). The other was this. An Agfa Synchro Box. A small, all-metal, delightful 1950s German box camera that I had never heard of before but which has turned out to be one of the nicest things I have shot all year.
This is the review and shoot writeup. I went in expecting an underwhelming toy. I came out a fan. If you can find one for £30 to £50 (which is roughly the going rate on eBay) and you have not tried medium format before, this is one of the cheapest ways into the format you will ever find.
What it is
The Agfa Synchro Box (officially the Agfa Synchro Box 600) is a medium format box camera manufactured by Agfa Camerawerk AG in Munich, Germany, between 1951 and 1957. It is a refinement of the earlier Agfa Box 50, with the “Synchro” name indicating the addition of flash synchronisation via a PC socket. The original advert I dug out called it the Agfa Magic Box, which appears to have been an earlier marketing name for the same design.
The camera shoots 6x9cm frames on 120 roll film, giving you eight frames per roll. The 6x9 format is the largest you can get on 120 film and was the standard medium format for box cameras and folders from the 1900s through to the 1960s. Each frame is roughly five times the area of a 35mm frame, which means that even with a single-element meniscus lens, the per-frame resolution is comparable to or better than a 35mm camera with a much better lens.
The lens itself is a single-element meniscus lens of 105mm focal length, which on 6x9 works out to approximately the 35mm equivalent of 50mm. So a normal lens. Single-element meniscus lenses are the simplest design possible: one piece of glass, curved on one side, flat on the other (more or less). They are cheap to make and limited in optical correction, with plenty of character in the resulting image.
The controls are nearly non-existent.
Focus: there is no focus. The lens is fixed at a hyperfocal distance that puts everything from about 3 metres to infinity in acceptable sharpness. Closer than 3 metres, your subject will be soft. There is no override.
Shutter speed: one speed only, somewhere between 1/30 and 1/50 of a second depending on which datasheet you read (the official Agfa figure is 1/50). A bulb mode is also available via a small slider above the shutter release for longer exposures.
Aperture: two settings, controlled by a sliding tab on the front of the camera. Pushed in, the lens shoots at f/11. Pulled out one click, the lens shoots at f/16. Pulled out a second click, the lens shoots back at f/11 but now with a built-in yellow filter dropped in front of the lens.
That is the entire control set. No focus. One shutter speed. Two apertures. Plus a built-in yellow filter as the only nod to creative choice.
The Sunny 16 design
The genius of this camera is that the entire control set is exactly what you need to apply the Sunny 16 rule.
The Sunny 16 rule is a method for estimating correct daylight exposure without a light meter. The basic version: on a sunny day, set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to the reciprocal of your film speed in ISO. So a roll of ISO 50 film in bright sun gives you f/16 at 1/50. Coincidentally, that is exactly the shutter speed and one of the two apertures available on the Synchro Box.
If you load the camera with ISO 50 film and shoot on a sunny day at f/16, you are spot on. Overcast? Switch to f/11 for one stop more exposure. Heavy overcast or shade? Pull the tab to the yellow filter position, which gives you f/11 minus about a stop of filter density, giving you something close to f/16 effective exposure but with the contrast benefits of the yellow filter for skies and clouds.
The whole camera is a Sunny 16 toolkit in physical form. Load the right film and follow the rule, and you will get correct exposures every time without needing a meter. This is a clever piece of consumer engineering for an era when light meters were expensive and uncommon.
The history
The box camera as a concept was invented by Kodak in 1888 with the original Kodak Number 1 (“you press the button, we do the rest”). The point of a box camera was to democratise photography by reducing the camera to its simplest possible form. A lens at one end and a film holder at the other, with the cheapest possible shutter mechanism in between.
Agfa entered the box camera market in 1930 and produced various versions over the next three decades. The Synchro Box represents the late evolution of the design. By 1951 the basic box camera concept had been refined to include flash synchronisation (the “Synchro” part), tripod sockets, a cable release socket and a built-in yellow filter for black-and-white shooters.
The original UK retail price in the 1950s was £2 9s, which the National Archives currency converter equates to roughly £75 in modern money. So this was an affordable camera at launch, aimed firmly at the consumer market. The advert I found described it as suitable for “anyone who wants to take good photographs without complicated technique”, which is exactly what it delivers.
You can buy one today for around £30 to £50 on eBay. Cheaper than its original launch price in real terms. Cheaper than a takeaway pizza meal for the family. For a camera that produces 6x9 negatives.
Loading the film
The film loading mechanism is one of those features that feels delightfully old-fashioned in the best way.
The back of the camera comes off after you press a release button. The entire internal mechanism slides out as a separate cone-shaped unit (the “inner cone”), which contains the lens and the film path plus the spool holders. You load a fresh 120 roll into the bottom of the cone, pull the paper leader up over the curved film plane and attach it to the take-up spool at the top. Then you slide the inner cone back into the outer box and close the back. Wind on until the number 1 appears in the red window on the rear of the camera.
It is fiddly to do the first time. The film wants to slip on the curved metal back of the inner cone because there is nothing holding it in place except gentle tension. After a couple of attempts you develop a feel for it. The trick is to keep moderate tension on the take-up spool while you slide the cone back in, so the film stays flat against the curved back without going slack.
There is no double-exposure prevention. You have to develop a personal discipline of “wind on immediately after every shot” or you will end up with frames overlapping each other on the film. This can be exploited artistically if you want to make double exposures on purpose, but it bites you the first time you accidentally fire two shots on the same frame.
The shoot
I had been disappointed with my earlier review of the Ferrania Eura (another simple consumer camera with limited controls) because I had loaded the wrong film and gone out with the wrong attitude. I was determined to do better with the Synchro Box. I metered the outside light with my proper light meter at ISO 50 and got f/6.3 at 1/50 second for the overcast conditions, which told me I needed something around ISO 50 to 125 to work with the Synchro Box’s f/11 setting.
The film I loaded was Ilford Ortho Plus at ISO 50. Ortho Plus is an interesting film: it is an orthochromatic black-and-white film, which means it is sensitive to blue and green light but not to red. The practical consequence is that skin tones render darker than they would on a panchromatic film, which is not ideal for portraiture. But because the Synchro Box cannot focus closer than 3 metres anyway, portraits were off the table. Ortho Plus suited the camera’s actual capabilities (landscapes, architecture, distant subjects) perfectly.
I drove out to a local park with a small bridge, a gatehouse, a football pitch and a small old graveyard. The plan was to use up the eight frames on a variety of subjects to see what the camera could do.
Frame 1 was a landscape with the bridge in the background and a foreground wall stepping down across the frame for interest. f/16 because the light meter said so. Shutter cocked and fired. Wind on.
Frame 2 was the gatehouse with the depth of an old wall leading to it. f/11 this time as the light had dropped slightly. Composed through the landscape viewfinder, fired, wound on.
Frames 3 to 6 were various compositions around the football pitch, including a dug-out at one end and the graveyard at the other. The graveyard frames are the ones I am most pleased with. There is something about the combination of a simple meniscus lens, an orthochromatic film and an overcast day that produces frames with a quietly melancholy quality.
Frames 7 and 8 were composition tests on subjects I knew would not photograph well (a row of bicycles against a wall, low light) just to use up the roll.
The results
I developed the film at home with my standard B&W workflow and was surprised by what came out.
The frames are sharp in the centre. Sharper than I expected, in fact. The single-element meniscus lens at f/16 produces centre sharpness that holds up to scrutiny at 100% scan resolution, which is more than I had hoped for. The kind of soft, dreamy edges you get from a Holga are not present here. This is a noticeably better lens than the Holga or the Diana.
Where the frames do soften is across the edges of the frame, but not in the way I expected. Instead of the symmetrical, circular vignetting and softening you would get from an undercorrected lens (which is what I expected from a single-element meniscus), the softening here is planar. The centre is sharp. Both sides soften. The top and bottom soften less. The pattern is consistent with the film not sitting completely flat across the curved film plane, with the centre of the frame in correct focus but the edges of the frame slightly off the focal plane.
This is a known characteristic of these cameras. The curved metal back of the inner cone is designed to compensate for the field curvature of the simple lens by curving the film to match. In practice, modern 120 film does not always conform perfectly to the curve, leading to the planar softening pattern I am seeing. You can mitigate this by keeping moderate winding tension and by storing the camera with film loaded between shoots.
Either way, the result is that the frames have a distinctive look: sharp centre, soft edges. Which, depending on the subject, can be either a problem or a feature.
The yellow filter test
I tried the built-in yellow filter on two frames. The yellow filter darkens the rendering of blue light, which has two practical effects on a B&W frame:
It darkens the sky relative to the clouds, which gives you more dramatic cloud rendering on a partly cloudy day. The Synchro Box yellow filter does this noticeably. The cloud frames I shot with the filter have more pronounced separation between sky and cloud than the ones without.
It also slightly evens out skin tones (yellow filter blocks the blue that would otherwise emphasise redness in skin) but since I was not shooting portraits, this benefit was not relevant.
The catch is that engaging the yellow filter forces you back to f/11 instead of f/16, with the filter providing about a stop of effective density reduction. So you are shooting at roughly f/16 equivalent with the yellow effect. The numbers work out and the clouds are better. Worth using when the sky is interesting.
What I learned
A few things from this shoot.
Box cameras are surprisingly capable. I had assumed before this shoot that a single-element meniscus lens with fixed focus and a single shutter speed would produce frames that were essentially toy-camera quality. They are not. The frames are sharper, better corrected and more competent in a way that genuinely surprised me.
The 6x9 format is a revelation. Each negative is enormous. The detail captured on a 6x9 frame, even with a simple lens, exceeds what most 35mm cameras can produce in fundamental information content. If you have access to a scanner that can do 120 well, the resolution on a Synchro Box scan is impressive.
The Sunny 16 design is elegant. The whole camera is engineered around one rule. Load the right film, follow the rule, expose correctly without a meter. It is a minimalist design philosophy that I think I have come to appreciate more now than I did before this shoot.
The Ortho Plus pairing was the right call. ISO 50 orthochromatic film matches the camera’s capabilities (no portraits possible, landscapes and architecture only) and the Sunny 16 rule (f/16 at 1/50 on a sunny day). If you only buy one film for one of these cameras, Ortho Plus or another ISO 50 to 125 B&W film is the right starting point.
There are still limits. The lack of close focus means you cannot do portraits. The lack of shutter speed control means you cannot freeze fast action or shoot in very low light. The lack of focus means you cannot do shallow depth-of-field effects. The Synchro Box is a camera for daylight, distant subjects and slow shooting. Within that envelope, it is excellent.
Verdict
For £30 to £50 on eBay (current going rate as of late 2020), the Agfa Synchro Box is one of the cheapest ways into medium format that exists. The frames are better than the spec sheet suggests. The handling is charming. The 6x9 format gives you genuinely large negatives that scan beautifully.
If you are curious about medium format and the cost of a Bronica or a Rolleiflex is putting you off, try a Synchro Box first. £30 buys you a camera and a fresh roll of 120 film, plus the chance to find out whether you actually like the slower, more deliberate pace of medium format shooting. If you decide you love it, you can move up to something more capable. If you decide it is not for you, you have lost less than the cost of a meal out.
For anyone already shooting 120 film with a Bronica or a Mamiya or a Hasselblad, the Synchro Box is still worth picking up as a take-anywhere knockabout camera. It is light, all-metal, hard to break and cheerful to use. Mine lives in the car in case I find myself somewhere photogenic with no other camera.
Next time
The next video on the channel is a review of my Canon AE-1 Program, which is a very different beast: a 35mm SLR with automation, multiple shutter speeds, aperture priority, the works. From zero options to all the options. Worth watching to see the contrast.
Big thanks to Camera Rescue Finland for the outlet box that contained this little gem. If you want to find your own diamond in the rough, they are at camerarescue.org. Worth supporting.