Taking Photos with a 90 Year-Old Camera

The Agfa Billy-Clack 51 is a strut-folding camera made by Agfa from about 1934 to 1940. I bought one as part of a 'monster hunting kit' that I was building for an art project, but does it still work as a camera? Lets find out!

[chaquator]

the mark at 6:44 is actually dust on the film itself, a scratch on the lens would be more blurred out because the scratch is not in focus

[pks]

I really wanna see you take a picture of something modern like a laptop or a smartphone with that camera, it would be really weird taking pictures of modern tech with an old 1930's camera.

[terryallen]

I discover and use ancient cameras all the time.
If I do a historic ranch shoot, I like to use a camera from the ranch founding years as part of the shoot. Often, the rancher still has the old cameras. 100 year old cameras can be brilliant, but even with imperfect lens, they can convey the historic perspective.
These images are very popular with my clients. I also do individual and family portraits with these cameras. All you need is a basic understanding of light and your results will be prized for generations.

[nefariousbum]

Gorgeous photos! I love vintage photos and those are just wonderful!

[ianseb]

6:50 I swear if you told me that picture was taken in the 30's I would believe you

[thomaspopple]

The two windows is for two different formats. 6x6 or 6x9. Depending on what size negative you want to shoot is depending on what window you would look into for the film frame number.

[pikachu.]

it might be 40 years newer, but I absolutely love taking photos with my Mamiya RB67, which also takes 120 film.

[jaysaw]

always loved vintage things im starting to want a vintage camera now too lol cars trucks boats tools .lawnmowers houses lots of vintage things!

[mattmorrison]

I'm also from Scotland and I have a folding camera from 1912.

[official-billvancleef]

6:50 wow, for a camera made in 1928, it sure does make 2018 look like 1928 with just that picture

[JackthePumpkincat]

3020 people
Taking pics with an "IPhone 11 pro max"

[dieterpeten]

Hey, greetings from Germany.
Nice Agfa Billy clack 51. It was produced from 1934-1940. You can install an App in your Smartphone for light messuring.
Nice camera and realy easy to use.

[Sennmut]

Wind till "1" is in the 1st red window, then till it is in the 2nd red window. Repeat for all numbers. It gives you 16 shots on an 8-shot roll.

[Walkercolt]

Own a Kodak Medalist 620 (6x9 format) folder that was my late Father's. Still takes fine, sharp pictures that will go to about 16x24 just fine. Good Ektar triplet lens.

[areallyrealisticguyd]

If you wanted clearer shots you could always use higher iso film. HP4 125 is meant for really bright sunny days and with the limited aperture settings your camera needs a lot of light.

[clairearendse]

I worked with professional photographers and processor back in the day. There was a dark room on site. This was in a university. One day one of them took me into their dark room and show you their process. He made several prints (approx A4 in size) of the one photo and showed me the results of playing with time and other enlarger settings. His last printing of an exposure he covered 7/8ths of the print with a book before exposing to the enlarger, and wrote his settings on the print. Then cover 6/8ths of the print, write his settings on the print. 5/8ths, 4/8ths, 3/8ths and so on. So you could see the effects slowly exposing the print compared with fast exposure times and varying settings all sampled on the one paper. He'd even wash his hands in the light as a print was being exposed to create contrast effects. So if you want the clouds in the sky to have more contrast he'd was his hands in the light between the light and the print as the enlarger was bathing the print in it's light. And it was black and white film and prints he was playing with. You get radically different results depending on exposure times and settings and how you play with the enlarger. So the same negative could create an image that looked like it should be hanging in a frame on a wall. . Or it could look washed out and yucky, depending on the printing process. Old school manual printing, not a machine. I think it's an art practiced over decades that is becoming lost in the modern world.

[BobBlarneystone]

Back in the 70s, I had a 116 film camera from ~1930s. The film was 2-1/4 x 4-1/2, and became scarce. So I used photographic paper as film in single sheets. The ASA was 3 (DIN 7-10). I made many 'ghost' pictures by setting the aperture to f45 and the exposure to 15 secs. This allowed me open the aperature, go around and sit on a graveyard headstone for 10 seconds and then go back to close the aperture. Thus, you could see the crisp image of the headstone through my body, while the trees were indistinct due to wind movement. From 25 stories up, such an exposure on busy Philadelphia street (38th & Walnut) revealed no cars other than those that were parked, and again the trees were indistinct. Hmm, I wonder if still have those pics somewhere.

[andrewburris]

I'm surprised that this 90 year old camera still works, and the photos look no different than the ones you would look at that were taken in the 30s and 40s.

[SilntObsvr]

If your film expert friend hasn't already filled you in, for this camera you use *both* red windows -- wind each number to the first window, make an exposure, then wind the same number to the second window, then the second number to the first, and then the second window. This was done because the camera is intended to make 16 frames. When that camera was made, you couldn't depend on 120 film having a track of framing numbers for 16-on, but they had 8-on right from the beginning in 1901. The "half frame" format was selected for the Billy-Clack because it gave twice as many exposures on the (expensive, relative to incomes of the day) roll of film, and by the 1930s, enlargements were more common than they'd been a couple decades earlier, so a smaller negative was a sensible choice.

In the end, you've got a nice old camera there, and it's a nice addition to a "Monster Hunting Kit". Don't forget to buy an antique roll of film off eBay to put into into the case along with the camera, star chart, and so forth. I've got several somewhat newer cameras of similar size, and some smaller ones as well, that use the same format; it's about my favorite negative size for 120 film.

[jamiehughes]

I managed to find my grandfather's old braun nurnberg paxette electromatic 1, which is around 60 years old