Exakta - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Exakta is a pioneer brand camera produced by the Ihagee
Ihagee
Ihagee was a camera manufacturer based in Dresden, Germany. Its best-known product was the Exakta single-lens reflex camera.-History:Johan Steenbergen, a Dutchman, founded a camera company called Industrie- und Handelsgesellschaft in Dresden in 1912. The name was shortened to Ihagee...

Kamerawerk in Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, founded as the Industrie und Handels-Gesellschaft mbH, in 1912.

Characteristics

Highlights of Exakta cameras include:

First single-lens reflex camera
Single-lens reflex camera
A single-lens reflex camera is a camera that typically uses a semi-automatic moving mirror system that permits the photographer to see exactly what will be captured by the film or digital imaging system, as opposed to pre-SLR cameras where the view through the viewfinder could be significantly...

(SLR) for 127 roll film
127 film
127 is a film format for still photography. The image format is usually a square 4×4 cm, but rectangular 4×3 cm and 4×6 cm are also standard. Oddly, C. F. Foth & Co. used 36×24 mm for its first “Derby” model....

(VP Exakta) came in 1933.
First wind-on lever in 1934.
First built-in flash socket, activated by the shutter
Shutter (photography)
In photography, a shutter is a device that allows light to pass for a determined period of time, for the purpose of exposing photographic film or a light-sensitive electronic sensor to light to capture a permanent image of a scene...

, in 1935.
First SLR for 35mm film
135 film
The term 135 was introduced by Kodak in 1934 as a designation for cartridge film wide, specifically for still photography. It quickly grew in popularity, surpassing 120 film by the late 1960s to become the most popular photographic film format...

came in 1936, the Kine Exakta
Kine Exakta
The Kine Exakta was the first 35mm SLR still camera. It was presented by Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen GmbH, Dresden at the Leipziger Frühjarmesse in March 1936. The Exakta name was already used by Ihagee on a roll film SLR camera line since 1933, among these the Vest Pocket Exakt Model B from...

.

Early Kine Exaktas

Kine Exakta

The Kine Exakta was the first 35mm SLR still camera. It was presented by Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen GmbH, Dresden at the Leipziger Frühjarmesse in March 1936. The Exakta name was already used by Ihagee on a roll film SLR camera line since 1933, among these the Vest Pocket Exakt Model B from...

had a fixed waist-level viewfinder

Viewfinder

In photography, a viewfinder is what the photographer looks through to compose, and in many cases to focus, the picture. Most viewfinders are separate, and suffer parallax, while the single-lens reflex camera lets the viewfinder use the main optical system. Viewfinders are used in many cameras of...

, but later models, starting with the Exakta Varex, had an interchangeable waist- or eye-level finder. Examat and Travemat Through-the-lens metering

Through-the-lens metering

Through-the-lens metering is a photographic term describing a feature of cameras capable of measuring light levels in a scene through their taking lenses, as opposed to a separate metering window...

prism

Prism (optics)

In optics, a prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light. The exact angles between the surfaces depend on the application. The traditional geometrical shape is that of a triangular prism with a triangular base and rectangular sides, and in colloquial use...

s were introduced in the mid-1960s. Most controls—including the shutter release and the film wind lever—are on the left-hand side, unlike most other cameras. The film is transported in the opposite direction to other 35mm SLRs. In classic Exaktas—made between 1936 and 1969—two film canisters can be used, one containing unexposed film and a second into which is wound the exposed film. A sliding knife built into the bottom of the camera can be used to slice the film so that the canister containing the exposed film can be removed while preserving the unexposed film in the main canister. The knife was omitted in the Exakta VX500, one of the last "official" Exakta cameras.

The shutter release on classic Exaktas is on the front of the camera, rather than the top. It is pressed with the left forefinger. This is quite similar to the Praktina design (which adapted it from Ihagee's product), the shutter-release of which was located on the right-hand side of the camera-body front. Most later Exakta lenses, known either as "automatic" or "semi-automatic" lenses, included a button in an extension that would align over the camera body's shutter release when the lens was mounted. The diaphragm of these lenses remained fully open, providing a bright viewfinder image, until the button was depressed halfway, when the iris would be stopped down to the shooting aperture; pressed farther, the lens button engaged the camera's shutter release button, tripping the shutter.

There was a full line of specialized equipment available for these 'system' cameras

System camera

A system camera is a camera with interchangeable components that constitutes the core of a system. Early representatives include Leica I Schraubgewinde , Exakta and the Nikon F...

that included microscope

Microscope

A microscope is an instrument used to see objects that are too small for the naked eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy...

adaptor, extension bellows

Bellows (photography)

In photography, a bellows is the pleated expandable part of a camera, usually a large or medium format camera, to allow the lens to be moved with respect to the focal plane for focusing....

, stereo

STEREO

STEREO is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched into orbits that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth...

attachments, medical attachments and various specialized finder screens. Equipment is fully compatible between all models manufactured between 1936 and 1969. The spelling found on cameras has traditionally been Exakta, but some early Kine-Exaktas were marked Exacta specifically for marketing in France, Portugal and the U.S., perhaps for copyright reasons; and certainly a great number of American collectors refer to the whole range as the "Exacta." A related line of smaller, simpler cameras was the "Exa" line; these, too, existed in several variations. The Beseler

Charles Beseler Company

Charles Beseler Company is a Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania industrial company addressing four primary markets: public and corporate steel shelving and furniture, iron shelving and storage, shrink wrap packaging and silver halide photography...

Topcon

Topcon is a Japanese manufacturer of optical equipment for ophthalmology and surveying. Their headquarters are in Itabashi, Tokyo. They are affiliated with Toshiba, which holds 40% of Topcon's stock.-History of Topcon:...

line of 35mm cameras used the same lens mount as the Exakta. In the early 1970s the Exakta "RTL 1000" was introduced; it accepted the older models' lenses but had its own range of viewfinders, which included a model with through-the-lens light metering. Because of this lack of backwards compatibility the RTL series is generally not regarded as part of Ihagee's Exakta line; most collectors consider the VX1000 the last "official" Exakta camera. M42 lens mount

M42 lens mount

The M42 lens mount is a screw thread mounting standard for attaching lenses to 35 mm cameras, primarily single-lens reflex models. It is more accurately known as the M42 × 1 mm standard, which means that it is a metric screw thread of 42 mm diameter and 1 mm thread pitch...

variants of the RTL line of cameras also appeared under the Practica name.

After an economic collapse following Germany's reunification

German reunification

German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...

, the successor of the firm is now back in business. This company is not related to the Dutchman Johan Steenbergen, the founder/owner of Ihagee, or with the Exakta, which was discontinued in the 1970s.

Models

35mm Exaktas:
Kine Exakta
Kine Exakta
The Kine Exakta was the first 35mm SLR still camera. It was presented by Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen GmbH, Dresden at the Leipziger Frühjarmesse in March 1936. The Exakta name was already used by Ihagee on a roll film SLR camera line since 1933, among these the Vest Pocket Exakt Model B from...
Kine Exakta II
Exakta Varex (*in US, Exakta V)
Exakta Varex VX (in US, Exakta VX)
Exakta VX IIa
Exakta VX IIb
Exakta VX500
Exakta VX1000

Exas:
Exa
Exa II
Exa IIa
Exa IIb (generally not considered part of the "official" Exa line)
Exa 500
Exakta 500

Due to legal restrictions, the name "Varex" was not permitted to adorn Exakta cameras built to be shipped to the United States of America. As such, cameras sold in Europe that bore the name "Varex," were sold in the United States simply without the engraving. Some cameras were actually censored during shipment, their "Varex" stricken out with a silver to match the colour of the camera body.

Trivia

An Exakta camera was used by the main character (who was a photographer) in the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

film Rear Window
Rear Window
Rear Window is a 1954 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by John Michael Hayes and based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder"...

.

An Exakta camera, loaded with salvaged movie film, was used by Czech photographer Josef Koudelka
Josef Koudelka
Josef Koudelka is a Czech photographer.-Biography:Josef Koudelka was born in 1938 in Boskovice, Moravia, town of about 10,000 inhabitants. He began photographing his family and the surroundings with a 6 x 6 Bakelite camera...

to capture his historic photojournalistic images of the 1968 Prague Spring.

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Characteristics

Models

Trivia

Further reading

See also

External links