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

Praktica Nova B

Hello, hello! It's that time of the week again.

I've been getting a startling number of hits lately so I wanted to make a proposition...

Please feel free to comment! I don't care what you have to say but it'll be way easier for me to keep doing this if there's some sort of dialogue and not just me blabbing to myself. Also, I know the information on the cameras that I'm putting up is not that extensive, so if you want to know more, please ask! I'm not an expert but cameras, lenses, optics, all that stuff, is what I do. I have a solid background in the subject and if I can't answer your question, I will know where to go for the answer. I would love for this blog to be a resource for people and not just my hobby.

So that being said, here is the Praktica Nova B! I got this camera 100% free from a bin at the camera swap meet here in Vancouver. And for that, I wouldn't have expected to get such a beautiful piece of equipment!

Surprisingly I haven't been able to find out that much about this little machine, other than it is almost identical to the Praktica Nova (surprise, surprise), which was produced from '64 to '69. Its only difference is one of my all-time favourite features on a camera. The light meter in the Nova B does not correspond to your selected aperture or shutter speed. Rather, it has a separate light meter and a little needle dial, with a window next to the "film knurl." You select your ISO, which allows the light meter to start working. A needle with a diamond on it will move according to the light. Then you can turn the dial until the other needle matches with the diamond one. The result: the dial will read all your f-stop and shutter speed combinations! Talk about simple! Or praktical, one could say...

Other than that tasty feature, the Nova B operates much like any other SLR. It has a fresnel type focus screen, with a depth of field preview (which isn't that effective, maybe it's just me), and it takes M42 screw mount lenses. This one came with the Petri lens in the picture, and unfortunately I don't know much about them. However, with this lens and a JC Penney (of all things) 1A filter, the camera takes some beautiful shots.

The Praktica series of cameras has its roots in East Germany, since 1949, and Pentacon, the company that produced them (originally called "VEB Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden") has some Zeiss blood as well. In other words, they're well built, reliable cameras.

On the topic of reliability, the mirror in my Nova B sometimes doesn't flip back down, so sometimes I have to take a random shot to get an image back in my viewfinder. But again, it was free! I would not give this thing away for the world.

The first photo was shot on 100 ISO Lomo enhanced colour film at Kitsilano beach. The other two were taken at the Vancouver aquarium on 400 ISO Superia... I believe. These last two were taken in really rough lighting conditions that my mom's fancy Lumix point and shoot couldn't handle. So don't throw out your film cameras!!!

xoxoxo
Caity