Tony Kemplen On The...Agfa Clack

Found in a box labelled ‘junk’, this nearly 70-year old dumpy, chunky, boxy camera still yields surprisingly sharp pictures

Some cameras have obscure or esoteric names, for example, the Olympus Ecru that I wrote about in AP 2 December. But there’s no mystery with this offering from Agfa – its onomatopoeic name sums it up perfectly. The Clack is dumpy, chunky and boxy. Also, at first sight, you might think the Clack takes square photos, but in fact it shoots 6cm x 9cm negatives, giving eight exposures out of a roll of 120 film.

I’m in my fifth decade of camera acquisition, and really can’t remember where this one came from. It resurfaced in a box of ‘junk’ cameras that I’d consigned to the loft many years ago, before I set about using a different one each week. My guess is that it came from a jumble sale in the early 1970s.