Cameras and photography

When my father in law came to visit this summer he brought with him a paperbag full of cameras. Thats a very nice thing to bring, Im thinking about asking all visitors to do that… Anyway, two of the cameras in the bag was this Exakta Varex IIb and EXA 1A. Very nice cameras from the Dresden based manufacturer Ihagee.

The manufacturer is famous for being among the first with a consistent system thinking. Almost all parts of their system where compatibel with each other from the late 30:s to the early 70:s.

Along with the cameras in the bag were some lenses and finders: two Domiplan 2.8/50 lenses, one “aus Jena” 4/135 telephoto lens, one soligor 3.5/35 wide angle lens, two hooded finders, one prism finder and one set of macro extension rings. Also included with the cameras where instruction manuals and a reciept from the store in Helsingborg where an old relative to my father in law both the equipment in the 60:s.

When I was visiting one of the stores of the salvation army in stockholm a couple of weeks ago I found a tele-converter with the inscription: bifocar tele-converter w-germany. Seems like my collection of exakta stuff is growing slowly but steady…

Last weekend I loaded the Varex IIb with some black and white film but the weather was to bad to take pictures outdoors so its still mainly unexposed. I will post some samples from the film as soon as they are exposed and developed.

There is a lot written about Exakta cameras on the net and as usual camera-wiki.org is a good start. Other informative websites is www.wrotniak.net and exakta.org.

Heres a pic of the whole collection I got from my father in law:

And the wide angle lense:

The telephoto lens:

The macro extension rings:

One of the hooded finders, the prism finder and the other hooded one is mounted on the cameras:

The Exakta Varex IIb:

And the EXA 1A:

Heres a sample from the Varex IIb: