First film from the 1961 Ihagee Exa

At Hill Lane Baptist Church Burnley Lancashire Great Britain.

Well, I have put the first film through the 1961 Ihagee Exa 0 last week, which I recently bought off Ebay.(See my previous post) The good news is it works! Though I did hit a snag at the end, more on this later!

The top shot was with the standard 50mm Meritar lens, the one directly above was with a Unitor Auto Wide, which is a 35mm f2.8 wide angle lens of unknown Japanese manufacture. It is a massive brute of a lens, not pretty to look at, but it did the job and fitted the whole of the chapel in!

The Exa fitted with the Unitor Auto Wide Lens. Not pretty, but functional! I have just taken the above shot quickly now, as I initially had no intention of using it, but just happened to need a wide angle, and this one was in my bag ! The rest of the shots were a combination of the Unitor and a 50mm Domiplan.

Anyway lets get back to my little expedition to try out the Exa. I had passed this little Chapel built in 1840, a few times before, but each time I did not have a film camera with me! So I set off in the car, listening to radio Lancashire, who were interviewing of all people 1970's rock star Suzi Quattro! She was going on about her new book about graveyards ! Who would have thought it Suzi Quattro into Churches and Gravestones! Right I thought, that's too much like coincidence, if graves are a good enough subject for Suzi Quattro, then they are good enough for me!

The Chapel is unlike most non conformist chapels these days, as it is obviously well loved and well used, in contrast to most of the Chapels in the industrial north that have now been pulled down, or abandoned or put to a non Christian use. (Plumbers Merchants seem to love them.) This one is still a lovely place.

How did I find the Exa in use? Well, the Meritar lens which is manual aperture setting, is slow to use, though to be fair I was not expecting anything less really, good job I was in a graveyard, nothing moving much here!

The waist level view finder is not very clear, and is quite small and on the dim side, much harder to use than the waist level finder in something like a Yashica 124G T.L.R. for example. This was never a problem to me in my teens, but now slightly older and wearing glasses, I have to admit focussing the Exa was not easy! I had to really concentrate. I think what I need here to make this a regular user, is a prism with a split image rangefinder incorporated. The waist level finder has a magnifier for critical focus, in practice I found it did not really help me.

However it was still a pleasant experience using the Exa, but of course to take any upright pictures as above, the waist level finder had to be swapped over for the prism finder which I borrowed from my Exakta Varex and took with me just in case.

It is a very nice Chapel, typical of the mid 1800's. These working class Non Conformist Chapels were built all over the East Lancashire / West Riding of Yorkshire border area, built in a certain style with local Millstone Grit of buff, which quickly darkened to almost black!

These were not the fancy Churches of the Church of England, no these were simple plain un pretentious places founded and funded by the local people, here in tops above Burnley, farmers, handloom weavers and mill workers from slightly lower down the valley.

All these places are fast disappearing now as England turns away from God, they are demolished, put to other uses or just left to decay before being knocked down.

The exposure is just by the old sunny 16 rule with the odd guess thrown in for good measure. Will have to get an exposure metre one day! The film coped well with my Luddite methods of exposure anyway.

So all the more reason to capture a few more of these places with my vintage cameras before they are gone for ever. Might have to invest in a couple more wide angle lenses in order to do so. Good excuse anyway!

You may recall at the beginning of the post I mentioned that I met with a snag, well I came to the end of the film far too soon, I could have taken much much more, but as I started to rewind the film it jammed just before it fully re wound. So I was stuck ! I had to abandon the trip, but later that night I opened the camera back in what I hoped was the pitch black and under the bed covers just to make sure, the film had stuck solid in the take up spool, it needed a firm tug to free it, then wind back in the rest of the film. However upon development it seems some light did get into the last few frames ! Pity, but there you go! No Darkroom at present I'm afraid.

Normally, I just start the film by pushing in the end of the leader tab, but after reading Werner Worst's Exa book he suggested to cut off the tab leader and insert the whole width of the film. However doing this caused two problems, the first being the film was too tight in the take up spool to be re-wound, the second was I lost two frames by cutting off the film leader. Well I will go back to how I always load the cameras in future !

The prism was needed for the upright format images, but this particular prism was just a plain one and was still difficult to focus. Ihagee produced a prism with a split image rangefinder which is much easier to focus, so one of these or indeed just the glass screen which could be swapped over, is needed before the Exas next outing I think!

All in all an interesting and enjoyable try out of a 'new' camera, but next time out will be with a split screen prism and the Biotar lens! I enjoyed using the Exa and was quite pleased with the results, please let me know what you think.

Am I happy with the results? Yes, apart from the lost frames due to getting light in. Which was my fault not the cameras. Am I happy with the Exa? Yes it is a nice old camera to use, I enjoyed using it. Am I glad I bought it? Yes definitely. Was it worth £40 ? I think so! Would I buy another, oh yes!

Well, I will leave you with the statement from above !

Oh, the film was Kentmere 100 ASA and the development and scanning was carried out by Hippo Photo Lab in Burnley Lancashire. The guy in the lab is really friendly, knows his stuff, well worth trying out. I took the film in Thursday morning and picked it up Friday morning. They sell film too. Over the road is an old fashioned camera shop, with loads of old cameras in the window! Well worth a visit when dropping off your film.

photohippo.co.uk

Hippo Photo Lab, 22 Standish Street Burnley Lancashire BB11 1AP.

Take care,

Phil.

The revue of this actual camera can be found here

kameraostalgie.blog/2025/05/16/1961-ihagee-exa/