The line-up, oldest at the front, newest at the back.

Now it’s a collection

If a couple of years ago I wrote about my 50-year long desire for an Exakta and its eventual fulfilment. There’s a seductive look to the cameras that Ihagee made in Dresden: the full name of the company was Industrie und Handelsgesellschaft (Industrial and Commercial Society) and the German pronunciation of the acronym IHG gave the rather odd name. Over the last six months, I seem to have turned into an Exakta collector. I don’t mean that I’ve got every model ever made, but I have got examples of the main models from about 1950 to the end of the line in the early seventies. All of them work after a fashion, and some work pretty well. The collection includes an Exa 500 (sadly, not the one I bought as my first SLR in 1970) and an Exa 1a, which is a quite remarkable camera, in several ways.

The Exakta Pedigree

As a result, I’ve had detailed insight into the development of one specific bloodline among cameras, and I’m seeing how problems often develop with age. It’s been a springboard for thinking about how products, in general, are developed, and that’s part of what I’m going to write about here.

 Exakta and Exa – while the cheaper model is more conventional in layout, it’s got a lot of the Ihagee DNA showing.

The Exakta was the first 35mm single-lens reflex, and as every early adopter knows there are drawbacks to being the first in a field. These days, they call it ‘beta testing’ and you really expect to have a few problems. Not that many years ago, it was always a good move to wait until a car had been on the market for a year before buying one. At least these days beta testers know what they’re getting into!

You may have seen cameras described as having an ‘instant return mirror’ - this phrase comes into focus with the Exaktas that came before the VX1000, as their mirrors went up and stayed up until the user wound the film on. In one sense, it doesn’t matter, as you’ve taken the shot, and can’t change it. Disconcerting for novices to the brand, though!

Ihagee developed the Exakta largely for scientific use, and adaptors for microscopes and telescopes featured prominently in their catalogues. The scientific applications probably account for the way that Exakta bodies (but NOT the cheaper Exa models) allow cassette-to-cassette winding of film, and incorporate a film-cutting knife. This means that exposing half-a-dozen frames and developing them without either wasting a whole film or waiting until the full film has been used is easy.

Varex with the takeup spool removed and replaced by a second cassette - the knife can be seen on the right, halfway through the cutting process. After cutting, the last frame can be wound into the takeup cassette and rushed to the darkroom - useful if you expose four or five frames in the course of a night in the observatory or a lab session with a microscope.

The range of lenses available was also extensive, ranging from a 20mm Flektogon to a 1000mm mirror lens. I have ended up with quite a collection of lenses between 30mm and 135mm, for various reasons.

For one thing, I have my best friend’s dad’s old camera (that’s the Exa 1a), and its disregarded standard lens, a Meritar. This is undoubtedly the cheapest and indubitably the nastiest original equipment lens ever fitted to Exakta cameras although I have recently found that it works rather well for taking pictures with ultraviolet light because of its three thin elements. And I have got a Meyer Trioplan 100mm lens which I bought for its unusual bubble Bokeh – it just happens that many of the lenses I use for special purposes were made in Exakta mounts.

The characteristic ‘bubble Bokeh’ of the Meyer Trioplan – has led to a price of up to £400 for original lenses, and remanufactured in various fittings. The new lenses have much higher ‘production values’ – and are priced accordingly.

The collection began with the Exakta VX1000 but I wrote about it a couple of years ago, but it’s now been joined by a VXIIa, a VXIIb, and a VX. If you put the camera side by side, you can see the development in use of materials, changes in detailed design, and simplification of construction. For instance, the heavy metal take-up spool of the VXIIa mutates into a much lighter part with a plastic core: it’s clearly cheaper, but it also makes the camera a few grams lighter. Is that a step backwards or forwards?

Top left of a VX and a VX1000 showing changes to the wind lever, frame counter and – crucially – the available shutter speeds.

Similarly, the earlier cameras have a special thumbwheel for setting the frame counter, but the VX1000 simply has the edge of the frame counting disc exposed so that you can turn it directly: but the bent metal winding lever has turned into a cast and shaped piece. The ingenious film cutting knife which is secured by a screw thread in the earlier cameras has only a click stop to hold it in the later camera. And the ingenious ‘push the centre to engage rewind’ knob mutates into a conventional fold-out crank.

By far the weirdest variation is on the VX: all the other cameras have conventional coaxial flash connections – though all of them have FP as well as M and X synchronisation: the VX has four mysterious holes in the body, which the internet tells me are Vacublitz connectors. Cruder than the standard PC socket (itself almost a thing of the past, these days), there are separate connections for positive and negative terminals on the front of the camera.

A view through the lens throat shows that the rubberised cloth of the blinds has deteriorated quite a bit. This is very obvious on the VX IIa and VX IIb, but absent on the later VX1000. It’s also not happened to my VX. I’m not sure whether this is because the VX used better materials, has been more carefully looked after, or has had the blinds replaced.

Keeping focus

I often look at the people toting 70-200 zooms and think how complicated and difficult they make life for themselves – but it was ever thus. When you fit a wide-angle or tele lens to an older camera, there are a variety of problems that seem to come with the territory. First, of course, there’s the increased difficulty of focussing – by the Seventies, this meant that microprisms or split-image devices blacked out, but on earlier cameras, the screen was just dimmer with the restricted aperture of the lenses. Focussing an f/3.5 30mm Lydith on the screen of any of these cameras is by guess and by God as much as by precision optical engineering, and you need good eyesight to get close.

Waist-level finder with a long lens at maximum aperture – compare this with the next picture, where the whole screen is darker, but the top edge is showing shading. The shading increases with further stopping down.

And there’s a tiny little issue with any tele lens – due, I believe, to the limited size of the mirror, there’s usually cut off at the top of the screen, or at least severe darkening. It’s not in evidence on negatives or slides, but it’s annoying and may cause you to miss details at the edge of the frame when you compose your picture.

Waist-level finder, long lens at f/5.6

A further problem issue is that additional lenses were far more of a luxury back then, and smaller production runs made lenses other than the 50mm more expensive. I’ve got a copy of Amateur Photographer from 1969 that lists most of the lenses on sale at the time, and it’s noticeable that both wide angle and tele lenses are relatively costly. This is perhaps the reason that many of the accessory lenses have preset or even fully-manual diaphragms.

What does that mean? A completely manual diaphragm means that you either have to focus at the taking aperture (no easy task at smaller apertures, where darkness and increasing depth of field make it hard to see what’s sharp), or adjust the aperture after focussing, necessitating looking at the lens. OK on a tripod: immensely difficult with a longer lens taking portraits in dim natural light. Zone focusing is great if the depth of field is reasonable, but it always feels like difficult territory to me.

Stopped right down, and without using the magnifier and excluding ambient light the view in the finder is hard to distinguish, let alone focus.

Lenses, lenses, lenses

My Exakta acquisitions have come with a variety of lenses, from the Pancolar which was the ultimate aspiration for Exakta users (fast, auto diaphragm, relatively modern design) to the Meyer Domiplan, a lens that served honourably on so many Exas, Exaktas and Praktica cameras. Most of my lenses, like the cameras, are East German, and even the Meritar has the same sense that it was made by engineers doing the best that they could within a budget. My one West German lens is notably cheaper, with front cell focus and a fully manual diaphragm, engineered to a price, and with significant investment in the looks, rather than the feel. Think Seventies Fiat beside a Lada…

The lightly-made Westron makes use of a lot of plastic: the ergonomics haven’t invited me to experiment with the lens much.

A good reason to seek out Exakta kit – especially if you can find an outfit – is that some of the lenses are now valued for their unusual rendering qualities. Most particularly, the Meyer Trioplan and Primoplan are prized for their unusual Bokeh – for lovely examples of what the Primoplan can achieve, have a look in Angi Wallace’s portfolio.

As a direct result of writing this article, I took the Westron out for a walk. Even wide open, it’s not that bad: no match for a Sony or a Sigma lens, but pretty acceptable for a lens that’s 50 years old, and a budget line.

Contemporary camera lessons

There are lessons for the thoughtful photographer who never wants to go near a film camera, because many of the same kind of developments are going on now. For instance, the DSLR has evolved from a film camera with a small sensor stuck behind the shutter into smaller and sleeker devices, and the joins are far less obvious! Manufacturers are constantly experimenting with new materials, and there are constant experiments with a finger-grip that is smaller but still allows the user to hold the camera comfortably without a strap (something that an Exakta’s heavily-tapered body simply won’t allow).

The ‘barrel’ shutter of the Exa 1a is weird and has a very limited range of speeds available.

You may want, of course, to hold fire when a new development arrives. Rather than pre-ordering when the price is high, you may want to wait until that new lens or camera body has been around for six months and you’ve read and re-read the reviews, and maybe have had a chance to handle the gear at a show or your local dealer. Who knows? You may be able to pay less – not only will the list price have dropped, but you can find an example that an ‘early adopter’ has traded in with 1,500 miles on the clock.

The famous Trioplan ‘bubble Bokeh’ is most apparent with out-of-focus background highlights, and at maximum aperture, as in this shot.

Above all, though, think on when the latest version lacks something that you have treasured – when it is lighter, or the buttons have moved. Sometimes you will find that the usefulness of a feature has decreased, but often, once you adapt to the change, you’ll find things have got better. I clung to film in the face of digital, and to my DSLR when I had bought my first mirrorless body – and while my film cameras still get exercised, as do my couple of DSLR bodies, I mainly shoot digital with a mirrorless camera. I get the results I want more simply and easily – but the experience of doing it in different ways remains valuable.

  The leatherette focus ring of some earlier Tessar and Pancolar lenses is pretty, but far less practical and durable than the later ‘zebra’ all-metal lenses.   

Go on – go out and take some pictures, and get some exercise!

One image can change us.

A picture, a moment can change the way we feel. Change how we see ourselves. Change our understanding and change the rules. Provoke and change history.

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