The Exakta camera - history

The Exakta A of 1933 was the first single lens reflex for small format roll film creating eight exposures 4 X 6.5cm on 127 format film. It was made by IHG - Industrie und Handels Gesellschaft - of Dresden who until that year had made a number of folding plate and roll film hand cameras in different format sizes since before the First World War.

By 1936, IHG had designed and manufactured the first of the Kine Exakta models using 35mm perforated film which would ultimately come to make the Exakta name one of the best known and sought after in the world of photography for the next thirty years. The camera featured an interchangeable lens mount enabling a wide range of Zeiss lenses to be fitted including the Primotar f/3.5 50mm and Tessar f/3.5 and f/2.8 50mm. It was one of the first 35mm slrs.

Many other models were produced by the company including the Night Exakta fitted with special fast lenses like the Biotar and Xenon types. Later models included the Exakta II and the Exakta Varex range from the 1950s with model names like Exakta V, Exakta VX, Exakta VX IIB. The company also produced a range of lower priced Exa cameras in the 1950s called Exa 1a, IIb and Exa 500.

By the mid 1960s, IHG had scaled down its operations; Exakta VX 1000 was based on the design of a Pentacon camera. The Exakta Real was made by a new company in west Germany called Ihagee West. Subsequent models were made in Japan by Cosina Co Ltd., (makers of modern Voigtlander branded lenses and Bessa 35mm cameras.), the Petri Camera Co. Ltd and by Tokyo Kogaku with a Topcon/Exakta bayonet mount and Copal metal shutter. The brand name was still being used in the 1980s, particularly for a medium format 6X6cm medium format slr, but the old IHG company had been absorbed into the giant Kombinat VEB Pentacon of Dresden in Germany, which by the early 1990s had ceased to exist.