1961 Ihagee Exa

with E. Ludwig Meritar f2.9 50mm lens

This little camera came through the post this afternoon, I have been selling bits and bobs in my photographic collection to raise some funds, this interesting piece of kit from the GDR came in place of a Nikon lens I sold! I don't have a Nikon so I thought the Exa would be much more use to me than a nice lens for a camera that I don't have! What do you think? It cost me £40.49p. Bargain or robbed?

What is it? Well it is an Exa, built in Dresden the year I was born. It really was just called the Exa, though unofficially at one time they used to call it the Exa 0 to distinguish it from the later Exa1.

This example is the last version of the Exa 0, the earlier versions had a more Gothic name plate, see the 1950 version above, but as Ihagee entered the swinging 60's they brought the little Exa bang up to date, cosmetically at least with the modern black nameplate. Reading online, most people seem to like the earlier versions, but personally I think the last version looks the best. Okay if we are splitting hairs, the lens is probably earlier than the body and the view finder later! But you get this a lot with both Exas and Exaktas that are up for sale these days.

I have a soft spot for these cameras, I bought one just like this in 1977 with my first wage packet when I was16, from Hayhursts in Nelson Lancashire. It was the first camera I ever bought, before I just 'borrowed' cameras from friends and family. Back then, the little Exa cost me my whole weeks wages! Worth every penny though.

Okay, lets start looking at exactly what we have got here. This is a really basic seat of the pants camera, no frills, no tricks, no gimmicks. It is simple, but it is all you need. You have to think when using these cameras and you have to slow down, everything is back to basics. The shutter has just five speeds and one of them is B ! The others are 25th, 50th, 100th and 150th of a second, yes that's right, the fastest shutter speed is 150th of a second! This is the Sopwith Camel of the photographic world!

This is the shutter speed dial! Well in this case a lever. Actually the lever is a really good idea, I hate faffing about with fiddley dials, lifting rings and turning knobs, this is much simpler, you just shift the lever to whatever speed you require. Brilliant. Simple. Very Germanic in a way. There is a fine black line down the outside of the lever to match up against the one on the camera body.

The whole camera is well built, solid, almost agricultural, but at the same time the design, the engineering, the materials and the build are top quality. Fit this with some top quality glass of your choice and this little chap will match anything. Currently it is fitted with the entry level Meritar which is a good lens but has its limitations. So lets think for a minute, Ihagee did not produce their own lenses, but in the 1950's and 1960's Germanies top lens makers all produced Exakta fit lenses, hundreds of them, why not pick a Leica beating lens of the time and fit it to the little Exa? Yes you have guessed it, that is what I'm planning for this Exa, but first of course we will try out the standard Meritar and see if this example works okay with film.

Well we are getting ahead of ourselves here, so lets get back on track. The picture above shows the film counter which you set manually, the big knob with the arrow winds on your film, charges the shutter and lifts the mirror, the lower button is the rewind button. There is no instant return mirror here, the viewfinder just goes blank until you wind on.

The viewfinder currently fitted is a standard waist level finder. Maybe a couple of years later than the camera body.

It has a flick up magnifier for your critical focus.

But if you look at this shot, where it says Ihagee Dresden, there is a little circular catch between the two words. Push this catch carefully downwards and pull up on the viewfinder and the finder come out. Why? So you can replace it with an eyelevel pentaprism if you so desire. Or you might just want to change the screen, maybe for a screen incorporating a split image rangefinder for example. Oh believe me the possibilities are endless!

There are of course some drawbacks with this camera, the main one with the EXA 0 is that you can't use lenses which have a greater focal length of 100mm. Anything much over 100mm and you get vignetting occurring. Or in plain English the four corners of the image are gradually cut off. So unless you want the corners of the image darker and less bright, just stick to lenses of a focal length that is less than 100 mm. I think it is something to do with the design of the shutter. The Exa does not have a proper focal plain shutter as such, here the mirror itself is part of the shutter. I think it is called a guillotine shutter. Later Exas like the Exa 11, 11a, 11b and Exa 500 have a more conventional shutter where the vignetting with longer lenses does not occur.

On the plus side people say that the Exa 0 is more reliable and it is simpler to fix and service if it does go wrong. I have never had one in bits so I don't know if this is indeed the case for certain, but that seems to be the general opinion today.

There is a good book called the Exa Book written by Werner Wurst and published in Great Britain by The Focal Press Limited in 1965 which goes into great detail about using the Exa and SLR photography in general. It was originally written in German, it's a bit of a dry read, but full of information on photography, a nice book of the period. I think Werner Wurst also wrote a similar book on the Exakta, as well as many other photography books but most titles seem to be just published in German.

Well worth a read if you can find one on the internet. Just as a little aside as I find this sort of thing interesting, Werner Wurst was really the Mr Exakta of his day. He was born in Dresden for a start, in 1912, then got a apprenticeship there at Ihagee, eventually ending up as head of the advertising department in 1937. After the war he went freelance producing most of Ihagees advertising material and writing the camera handbooks for them. So he really new his Exas and Exaktas. He died in 1986 and is buried in Dresden.

Right back to the camera! The underside of the Exa is quite an unusual design. The bit that contains the two teardrops is actually the hinged back of the camera, while the middle bit that contains the tripod bush is the actual camera body. In the Exa the body shape of the Exakta is actually reversed as well as smaller as the picture below shows.

So because most things in the Exa / Exakta system are interchangeable, if you have other lenses or viewfinders the look and use of the camera can be radically changed either just because you want it to look that way, or you want it that way for a particular job or subject. Take a look, this is the same camera body at all times.

So above we have Exa 0 with an eyelevel prism and a 50mm Tessar.

Here we have the same Exa 0 with a 50mm Domiplan lens and waistlevel finder.

The Exa 0 with Prism and a 58mm Biotar lens.

Above the Exa 0 is now fitted with the Meritar 50mm and a Prism.

I could go on and on, but you get my drift, the above is with an early waist level finder and the Zeiss Biotar.

The beauty of the Exa system is that you don't have to buy all of the things at once, there are always lots of Exa fit items for sale, so you can just add things as and when you can afford them. Okay, lenses are going up in price, but this is fuelled by the digital bokeh boys who buy up old German lenses to stick on their plastic digital boxes. However they don't seem to go for Japanese Exakta fit lenses, because I suspect they are less prone to the flare and distortion they crave, so the price of them has not been artificially pushed up. Some of the better Japanese lenses are quite good, good contrast and reasonably sharp so if you just want to take photographs give them a try.

No, I have never heard of a Mawa lens either ! I wonder if it is any good ! Got to be worth a try sometime.

Right, well I have got the camera a choice of lenses, a new film, all I need is a bit of free time to give it a whirl, see what happens.

Phil