Fat Boys Unite

Just like me, the Agfa Clack is lovely and chubby. Also a bit like me, it’s a camera, a device recording the world around it without taking part in most of its activities. There’s also a few obvious differences. Its focus is better than mine, it’s from Germany and it was born in 1954, fifteen years before me.

The Clack was aptly named after the sound it makes when you snap your shot. The cow says moo and the Clack says clack. Keep in mind it’s a German camera, so the ‘a’ would be the one from a short ‘bark’, rather than the ‘a’ from ‘back’. Its successor was called the Click, because that one says click. In German, the ‘i’ would sound more like the ‘ea’ in ‘beat’ than the ‘i’ in ‘bit’.

All of this really makes me wonder what the Isola and Synchro Box sound like –two Agfa cameras I deconstructed earlier, included below for your convenience.

According to a yellow sticker inside the camera body, this particular specimen was once sold by one Cor Dekker in Delft, The Netherlands. The good man –or at least his shop- must have kicked the bucket sometime before the internet took over the world, as I can’t find a trace of either. Google Streetview reveals the address is currently occupied by a thrift shop –or at least when the Google car did its drive-by picture shooting. How appropriate!

I might pay them a visit some day, with my shoe box full of Agfa Clack parts, and demand a refund, since it’s obviously not working anymore –German engineering is no match for a Dutch deconstructionist.