It's not the most sophisticated of cameras but it has the best name by far, imagine being summoned to a meeting at Agfa's creative round table in Munchen in 1954 and asking the question "so, was wir gehend, unser spätestes Angebot zu nennen sind" or "so what are we going to call our latest offering" (I have no idea whether these translations make any sense at all but I have utmost faith in Babel Fish) and some bright spark says "lassen Sie uns es nennen das Geklapper" or "let's call it the Clack!" Of course the Americans didn't get it and insisted they call it the Click, ffs click, what's that got to do with photography?
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Agfa Clack-2 by
Raglansurf, on Flickr[/IMG]
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Agfa Clack-1 by
Raglansurf, on Flickr[/IMG]
Basically it's a pressed metal box with a fake snake skin cover. The height of technical sophistication it has 1 shutter speed, approximately 1/30th of a second and a B setting, 2 apertures which are something like f11 & f12.5 and according to Camerapedia
http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Agfa_Clack it's supposed to have a yellow filter but I'm buggered if I can see it.
Also according to camerapedia site The best feature is the curved film plane. There's no pressure plate in the back of the camera; the film isn't supposed to be flattened. The camera body is oval shaped when viewed from above, and the film is led around the curved back of the camera to create maximum sharpness: an intelligent solution to create a low-cost camera of decent quality.
It has the quaintly named zone focusing system with two steps. 1-3m (3-10 feet) with a built-in close-up lens and 3m (10 feet)-infinity, which pretty much equates to mountains and everything else.
The Clack is still a very useable camera, it uses the readily available 120 film, and it shoots very nice big 6x9 negatives which will give you 8 shots on a roll. I usually try and use something like a 50asa film in it but you can stretch that a little. So if you want to try a 1950's box camera make some room in your life for a Clack, what's not to like?
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Agfa Clack PanF-7 by
Raglansurf, on Flickr[/IMG]
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Agfa Clack PanF-8 by
Raglansurf, on Flickr[/IMG]