The Leidolf Wetzlar Lordomat SE was my late mother Angela’s main camera in the 1950s and 1960s. We do not know exactly when it was bought, but it must have been sometime in the late 1950s when the camera came out. There had already been two Voigtländer Brillant 6×6 cameras and at least one Agfa Clack in our family at that point and my grandfather had acquired a Voigtländer Vitomatic IIa, but my mother wanted a 35mm camera too and the Lordomat was a relatively inexpensive alternative at that time. It didn’t have a built-in light meter, but an optical rangefinder like the Vitomatic and it came with the rare Lordonar 50mm f/1.9 lens. She used the camera for thousands of photos and they still all look amazing today. I still own the Lordomat SE today and while the shutter has had some problems and at one point I was sure it was broken, after a while it worked again. I haven’t shot any film with it myself, but I might do that soon just for old time’s sake.

Coming from Wetzlar, the city of Leica, the Leidolf company sold a lot of inexpensive cameras from the late 1940s to the early 1960s and the Lordomat series had been a great alternative to other more expensive cameras at that time. There were a lot of different models, some simple ones but also some with rangefinders like the Lordomat SE, others even with built-in light meters. Most of them had detachable lenses and there were a few of them available from Leidolf and a few other manufacturers. The company history was short, in 1962 Leidolf unfortunately ceased production. Today the Leidolf cameras are comparatively rare and I think I can count myself lucky that I own such a wonderful piece of camera history.

The unspectacular location where Mülheim’s Rumbach becomes an underground river.

« Google Maps » | Date: 25.07.2023

Mülheim’s Rumbach creek has steps for fish so they can go back to their spawning grounds.

« Google Maps » | Date: 25.07.2023

Mülheim’s Rumbach, the creek that once flowed through the inner city but now only surfaces here.

« Google Maps » | Date: 25.07.2023

« Google Maps » | Date: 25.07.2023

« Google Maps » | Date: 25.07.2023

« Google Maps » | Date: 25.07.2023

« Google Maps » | Date: 25.07.2023

The black Agfa Optima Sensor Flash with the iconic big red shutter button was my true childhood camera which I used even before I was able to write. My mom chose it because we tried out one of the Agfa pocketfilm cameras before, but the image quality turned out to be so bad that instead I was given the Agfa Optima 35mm viewfinder camera – the only model with the built-in flash. It was very easy to use – I only had to set the distance and press the shutter. Despite the simplicity, it took very good photos that easily rivaled our Praktica B200 and it became the most-used camera in the 1980s in my family. I still own it and it still works, although I haven’t used it since the mid-1990. Maybe I will shoot a roll of black and white film with it just for fun sometime again!

The Agfa Optima Sensor Flash was the odd one out of the new generation Optima Sensor series that started in 1976. It had a slightly different case than the other cameras, but apart from the built-in flash is identical to the 535 mid-level model that included the four-lens Solitar 40mm f/2.8 lens. The Flash version sadly did not have an optical rangefinder like the 1535 top model so you had to estimate the distance yourself. Today, even the lesser models of the series are easily worth a triple digit price on the used camera market and the 1535 is worth several hundred Euro in good condition.

« Google Maps » | Date: 25.07.2023