[rollei_list] Re: More R...35mm Pro cameras, Pentax

  • From: Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:34:14 -0400

At 07:21 PM 3/28/2010, Richard Knoppow wrote:

>     I don't think communism killed off Ihagee any more than
>it killed off Zeiss-Ikon. The Exakta was one of the first
>SLR cameras but did not do much improving over the years.
>Its also left-handed. The Exakta-66, which was competing
>with Hasselblad quickly gained a  reputation for having
>shutter troubles. Hasselblad re-designed their earliest
>camera to overcome a similar problem but Exakta never did
>and the model died.
>     It is true that Exakta 35mm cameras took more lenses
>than probably any other camera on the market. They varied
>from excellent to so-so. I think the original lenses for the
>Exakta-66 were Tessars made by Zeiss and like all Tessars
>are not at their best at this speed.
>     The first lenses for the Hasselblad were made by Kodak.
>I have never been able to determine for certain if these
>were Tessar types or based on the same modified Heliar
>design as used for the Medalist camera. The Kodak version of
>the Heliar was an outstanding lens at f/3.5 and may well
>have been capable of good performance as an f/2.8 lens.
>However, Hasselblad switched to Zeiss lenses as soon as
>Zeiss had regained the capacity to supply them. These were
>six element Planar/Biotar types which have inherently better
>correction at higher apertures than the Tessar or any of the
>Triplet derivitives like the heliar.
>     I do agree that the Exakta system for 35mm was probably
>the most complete ever offered. By the time Ihagee began to
>modernize their cameras it was too late. Had they begun a
>few years earlier Exakta rather than Nikon might have been
>the one to establish the 35mm SLR as the most common camera
>for pro work.
>     BTW, I have an Exakta Varex which needs a new shutter
>curtain. One day I will find someone fairly local to take
>this and my Leica IIIc to. Varex is the actual name of the
>camera model. However someone else had that name copyright
>in the USA so Exakta had to call their's the Vx. Mine was
>originally sold in Germany.

Richard
Yes, Communism killed off Ihagee -- they were finally nationalized in 1963, and were closed down two years later by the DDR. Market forces had nothing to do with this -- the Exakta was still the primary lab camera throughout the West. It was Communist incompetence which caused the nationalized Ihagee to be shut down.
Communism certainly did not kill off Zeiss Ikon: capitalist incompetence killed off Zeiss Ikon, especially the blind devotion to the over-engineered Contarex. A rethought business plan would have saved Zeiss Ikon but, as it was, the Contarex just made the Ziess Ikon balance sheet drip red from 1954 onwards. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result ... and Zeiss Ikon proved that point very nicely! We will never know on this Earth why Heinz Küppenbender permitted this lunacy to persist for almost twenty years, but so he did -- and he was the man who made the Prewar Zeiss Ikon so richly profitable.
The Exakta 66 was long gone from the market place, by a decade or so, by the time we are discussing. Its failure had nothing to do with the failure of Ihagee. The Bentzin Primarflex had more to do with the death of the Exakta 66 than did the existence of the DDR.
Rick Nordin does a nice job in analyzing all of the Kodak lenses for the Hasselblad 1600F/1000F, including diagrams and patent numbers. This is in his HASSELBLAD COMPENDIUM, a work I thoroughly recommend for its depth and scholarship.
The standard work on Ihagee is EXAKTA CAMERAS 1933 -1978 by Aguila and Rouah. This is a short but very authoritative work. The discussions on lenses is unique, as they cover some lens lines, such as Kilfitt and Novoflex, for which information is hard to find. 

Ivor Matanle's books on COLLECTING CAMERAS are also worthy of note.

Marc


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Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!

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