Agfa Clack

The Agfa Clack is a medium format camera. It was introduced in the 50s and was built until the 60s. It is considered the last box camera from Agfa.

The new price for the Clack was 19.50 D-Mark at the time. It was a great success and was sold over a million times. Today, you can get it quite easily for a few euros. The name comes from the shutter sound, of course.

The camera is wrapped in a black leather imitation snake look. There is an extendable handle on the side, which makes holding the camera much easier.

The box camera, built in Munich, is quite simple in design. There is a meniscus lens in it, and the focal length is fixed at 95 mm. The largest aperture is f/11. Early Clacks also had an f/16 aperture, but this was later replaced by a yellow filter. A close-up lens can be swung in for close-ups. The built-in viewfinder can be used to focus on the subject.

The Clack has two exposure times, one for normal shots (1/30 seconds) and a bulb mode for long exposures. For shooting at night or in low light, it also has a connection for a tripod and a cable release.

The Clack also has a flash connection, but only for the Agfa Clibo Blitzer and Agfa Clack Blitzer. There is no lens cap for it, but the lens can be protected with the matching case.

Films for the Agfa Clack

Nothing works for the Agfa Clack without photo films. More precisely, the camera needs medium format films. This kind of films are still produced by some manufacturers. One possible film for color images is the Lomography Color Negative 100 120*. A possibility for B&W images is the Ilford FP4 Plus*.

The camera exposes images in 6×9 format. So only 8 images fit on one film.

Sample photos

Night shot with the Clack in the Bulb mode

All sample photos was made with Shanghai GP3 100 and developed in XTOL (1+3) for 16 minutes at 20 degrees.