Ihagee Exa IIa

I love the story of the Ihagee company. I don't know why. For a camera collector and someone interested in the history of such things, it's a good story. Also, it seems like many of the older camera enthusiast people I've met love to talk about it.

So with that cryptic introduction, let's talk Ihagee!

The name is actually an acronym-- IHG, which is pronounced ee ha gay in German, and in Deutsch the phonetic spelling is Ihagee. It's short for Industrie- und Handelsgesellschaft (no wonder they shortened it, eh?), and the company name became Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co. It was founded in 1918 with Johan Steenbergen at the helm. The company enjoyed a lot of success, particularly with the Exacta line.

World War II shook up camera production in Dresden. Steenbergen, who was Dutch, left Dresden in 1942 due to xenophobia and all that, and Ihagee stopped making cameras. In 1945 the factory was destroyed by a bomb.

After the war the Soviet Union took over and reestablished Ihagee, producing and selling Exactas and Exas from what was salvaged from the factory. It was soon thereafter taken over by Pentacon (producer of my darling Praktica Nova B, if you remember), although I believe they continued producing cameras under the Ihagee nameplate until the 70s.

Steenbergen did return to Germany in 1959, and, being unable to reclaim his company, started Ihagee West in Frankfurt. This Ihagee didn't do so great and is no longer. Poor guy!

So that's the story, more or less. Save it for when you're chatting up some camera collector and they'll probably be impressed.

On to the Exa IIa! Mine is a Version 2 which has eyelets on the front for a strap and was produced in the mid 60s. It's pretty sturdy, 100% manual, and has shutter speeds as low as 1/2 a second. The Exa series generally have pretty slow shutter speeds, and this one only goes up to 1/250.

The lens that came with this guy is a Meyer Auto Primotar 1:3.5 50mm, which looks pretty nice in my opinion! It has an M42 screw mount, so it should work on my Praktica as well as on a lot of older Pentax cameras such as the Spotmatic.

(27/6/2012 Edit: Oh man!! I made a big mistake-- the lens that came on my Exa iia is actually an Exa bayonet mount lens, but the same lens is out there with an M42 mount. So I can't use this lens on any of my other cameras... oh well!)

Unfortunately, I haven't had the best of luck with my model. It was even dirtier when I bought it and I don't think it was very well cared for. The shutter curtain is all gummy, and although it often appears to work (like right now), I haven't managed to shoot a good roll with it. I think I'll have to take it to a doctor and maybe update later with some photos. However, it's a beautiful show piece! And what a story to go with it!

Till next time!
Caity