Agfa Billy Clack page

IN THE 1930s Agfa made a whole range of cameras with the name Billy. Why Billy, I don’t know unless it was intended as a pet name. They were all fairly simple specification family cameras, so maybe Billy was intended as a term of endearment. Clack was a generic word used by German makers from the late 1800s, imitating the sound of a shutter. The name Billy didn’t appeal to Agfa’s marketing people in the UK and USA, so they changed it to the Agfa Speedex Clack. I would have kept the name Billy and changed the word Clack for something more attractive, but marketing people have ideas which are all their own.

      Kodak fanciers will immediately see the resemblance of this strut folding Billy to the first models of the Jiffy Kodak Six-20 that appeared in 1933. Most books give the introduction of this Billy Clack as a year or two later, so maybe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Jiffy – quick to use; Speedex – quick to use? Your guess is probably better than mine.

Billy Clack - unpretentious quality

      The Billy Clack took 120 size film and came in two formats, 8 pictures 6 by 9cm and 16 pictures 6 by 4.5cm. Mine is the 6 by 4.5 version, and is almost as new. It’s an attractive little camera. The black enamelled front springs out smartly on self-erecting struts, and has a typical 1930s Art-deco design. Two little brilliant viewfinders are built into the front, one for portrait and one for landscape pictures. At first, these seem to be the wrong way round till you realise that with 16 pictures 6 by 4.5cm, the longest side is horizontal with the camera body held vertically.

      Just behind the lens panel at the top is a lever to give you a choice of Instantaneous, probably about 1/50sec, and Time exposures. At the bottom is a lever to lock the shutter release so it doesn’t fire accidentally in your pocket, and alongside is a pull-out metal strip that brings down a light green filter.

      The lens is an Igenar (spelled Jgenar on its name plate). In its longer focal length of 105mm, the Igenar was a triplet, but on the Billy Clack its an aplanat, to judge by the reflections, a cemented doublet which puts it a cut above the simple meniscus of the average box camera. The maximum aperture is f/8.8, and there’s a lever on the front panel for stopping it down to f/11 or f/16, not by an iris but by simple Waterhouse-type stops, plain holes in other words, in a wheel. The lens is mounted behind the shutter and stops, an arrangement with a simple lens for which there were arguments for and against. What looks like a front element is a plain glass, probably intended to look better than an open hole, and also serve to keep dust out.

      On the back of the body are two red windows, the usual arrangement for getting 16 exposures with a film backing paper numbered 1 to 8. To avoid getting round fog spots with the panchromatic film becoming more popular in the 1930s, the windows are covered by a spring-loaded metal plate that you have to swing to one side when you wind on.

      In general, it’s unpretentious in its specification, but it’s a well made camera. The black enamel and chromium plate finish are excellent and give the camera a feeling of quality which it probably deserves. At its modest apertures the aplanat lens gives a creditable account of itself, though you have to be very careful not to get flare from the front plain glass ‘element’. It’s almost impossible to fit a lens hood on the tiny projection.

      Unfortunately for camera collectors, it’s so typically Art-deco that it’s sought after by people who collect Art-deco objects, and this has tended to push the price up.