Praktica IV and V series of S.L.R.'s circa 1959 to 1965. A quick buyers guide and run down of these impressive German cameras.

Kamera Ostalgie
2 days ago
11 min read

I suppose as this blog is soon coming to an end, I should finish off where I started, with the Praktica IV and V series of cameras. It is a while since I wrote a post on them, so lets look in greater detail at them and why I think they are a perfect vintage SLR. Also I want to look at the pitfalls and problems with buying them today, and of course what are the problems you will encounter when using them for photography on a regular basis. Please don't be put off buying one though, I'm just looking at them realistically as a collectable but useable camera capable of giving you great results for little money today.

I will start by trying to explain why I like them so much. Firstly it is the feel of them, they sort of just feel right, in a very Teutonic sort of way. They feel solid, well made and they feel actually vintage. If you compare them with a Pentax S1a another great camera of the same vintage, the Pentax feels very modern in comparison, despite being new around at the same time.

The East German cameras had a totally different feel than the German SLRs of the West. Lets say a Bessamatic for example, a camera I used a lot, or you could make the same comparison with a Contaflex. Both are smoother more refined, nicer finished, the engineering feel is perhaps a little more Leica like! Where as the Prakticas in comparison feel tougher, more rugged and quite agricultural in there engineering. They are rugged but not refined.

So, if I'm wanting to take some pictures with a vintage camera, then I want the camera to feel old, I want to have to think before using it, I want a bit of a challenge if you like, also I want to slow the whole taking process down and when I get some good results I get more satisfaction from getting those good results from an underdog, a camera most photographers would not use today. For this type of thinking, the Praktica IV and V is the perfect camera, it is a quality camera, don't be mistaken thinking it is a poor quality camera from the East, things could not be further from the truth.

So, lets have a bit of a run down of the various models in the series, there were quite a few, more than most people are aware of of ! Here we go.

The K.W. Praktica of 1959. This was the first of the line, before the Pentacon Stalinist style take over of the East German camera makers happened. The first K.W. Praktica IV cameras can be recognised by the black pentaprism with the white KW logo on it.

The next version, still called the Praktica IV but without the black painted prism and with the Pentacon logo superseding the K.W logo is virtually the same camera. There is another version where the Praktica lettering is underlined, but again it is the same camera.

Next came the Praktica IV B, which was the same as the IV, but with the luxury of having a built in exposure meter.

Alongside the IV and the IV B was the IV M, which had a rangefinder type focus screen which made focusing much more manageable with the split image screen.

To top all that came the all singing all dancing IV BM, which was a IV but with the built in light meter and the split image rangefinder. You don't find many of these on the U.K. market, most of them seemed to stay in Germany! You can't blame them for that !

After the IV BM came the IV F. This was a IV but with a very bright and clear Fresnel screen and the rangefinder combined. The IV F is much quicker to focus than the other models.

Along side the IV F was, yes you guessed it, the IV FB which was the IV F but with an addition of a built in light meter.

Then things really started to change with the introduction of the V F! An instant return mirror was brought in, so that the viewfinder image instantly re-appears after the shot has been taken. Prior to that, the screen was black until you wound on. Also the little warning signal reminding you to wind on appears in the viewfinder until you remember to wind on! The shutter speeds were now in the more modern geometrical progression, rather than the old style speeds.

Finally alongside the V F was the V FB, which was in a nutshell a V F with the built in light meter.

There you have it, a run down of the IV and V series Prakticas ! This takes us up to around 1965, when the Nova series was phased in, a pure Pentacon re-design, but that is a story for another day as they say.

The general run of opinion seems to be that the IV and V series were better built than the later Novas. Now I'm not a camera repairer so I can't say if this is actually the case or not, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that. I like the later Novas as well, but as a user of both, I don't think they are as rugged or as reliable as the earlier IV and V models. The IV and V were actual K.W. designs, where as the Nova was the product of the Soviet state industrial method and was subject to the thinking that producing more cameras, cheaper and quicker was the way to go, where as the K.W way of thinking was more typically Germanic in its thought process, where quality and long life before repair was still very important, though increasingly at odds with the Soviet style cockeyed thinking of the time.

Lets have a look at buying a Praktica IV or V today. First you have to think and realise that theses cameras are between 67 and 61 years old today. It is expecting too much for them to be in a fully working condition today in 2026. Far too much. If you are thinking of buying one of these cameras today budget in for a complete professional service, by someone that actually knows what they are doing. Without a service they are just a dust gathering paperweight.

The chances are the shutter will not be working properly, take it from me, I have bought a lot of these old Prakticas recently, none of them had shutters that worked properly, the odd one worked in a fashion, but not at the correct speeds. Even if it works in a fashion, by the time you run a couple of films through it it will have failed. So find a good repairer and get the body serviced.

Watch out for the missing foot ! They tend to drop off leaving three littles holes to let the light in! See the picture below.

Unfortunately today, these old classic Prakticas nearly always come up for sale without their original lens. The digital lens robbers buy complete Prakticas just for the lens to stick on their horrible plastic digital cameras, because they like the bokeh or whatever they want to call it. The bodies are junked, or at best put on eBay minus the original lenses. Pure vandalism, I hate it and the people that carry it out. It is like sawing the mascot of a Rolls Royce and fixing it to a Nissan. Meanwhile the body ends up just hanging about getting dusty, the mirror ruined etc, before being old off for a few quid on line. To put it bluntly it is just mindless vandalism by morons.

The trouble is today, any original lenses on eBay go for a high price because of the demand by the digital dickheads, but before you use the lens on your vintage Praktica, it will still need a professional clean to give its best, and usually the iris will need sorting out before you can use it. If it is Zeiss, then the focus mechanism will be so stiff the lens will unscrew from the camera body mount before the focus even moves! So buying a German lens for your Praktica body becomes an expensive nightmare!

The slightly later Zeiss Tessar lenses like the example pictured above, are really poor when it comes to stiff focus problems. But there are solutions if you have bought your camera body, had it cleaned and serviced and are getting beyond your budget but still have no lens!

Being M42 there are a lot of 'other makes' of lenses out there at low cost that will fit your Praktica. German lenses of the 1950's and 1960's, while being lovely looking lenses, with nice glass, do seem to suffer from various issues which become apparent today, 50, 60 or 70 years later. They do suffer badly from dirt and dust getting in, also many are now quite badly effected by lens fungus. You don't want either if you want to take good pictures. Strangely enough, Japanese lenses of the late 1960's and 1970's don't seem to be as badly affected by dust or fungus, also the focus mechanism's are usually still nice and smooth and the iris still is nice and snappy. However because of lack of collector interest and little interest from the digital conversion crowd, prices of these old Japanese lenses are comparatively low. Another positive is that many of these lenses give very nice results, some as good or even better than some of the original German ones. They may not look as classic or as stylish, but the quite often perform! So if you need a cheaper lens, have a look at some of the old Japanese lenses, you can always get a nice alloy German one at a later date!

Let me give you an example, the picture above was taken last December on an old Praktica Nova fitted with a 1970's Japanese wide angle lens called an Optomax Auto Wide of 35mm and max aperture of 2.8. It cost me £12.43 including the postage.

It is not a pretty lens, but it does perform okay. The conditions were below freezing, I had been walking about most of the day, my German Domiplan, on my other Nova, a really nice lens, was struggling in the extreme cold, the iris was getting sluggish, the focus tight, but the Optomax auto wide never faltered, just turned out 36 cracking shots with no problems whatsoever. I have no idea who made it, but for an old lens costing twelve quid I was more than happy with it.

If you are saying yes, but it is not a German lens of the period, well I get where you are coming from, old German cameras should be fitted with a German lens of the same period. I get that, but the cost can be extremely high for anything that actually works today. However, there is another option, the 50mm E. Ludwig Meritar lens ! Yes, it was the cheap entry level lens of the time, but it still looks nice, looks period, performs well as long as it is not wide open, is nice and compact and for some reason the digital bokeh boys don't like the smell of the bokeh, so have not pushed the prices up like all the others, and of course snobbish collectors don't want their camera seen dead with the cheap entry level Meritar lens on it in the display cabinet! Get one, they are dirt cheap for a 1950's alloy German lens, and they punch way above their weight. Usually they still work well, Ludwig did not scrimp and save money on grease quality they used the best, the lens seems dust tight, though occasionally you find one where the aperture ring does not move the iris, but they are few and far between and easy to check !

I like the Meritar and it's good value, so much, I bought two of them, and they look just fine on the Praktica IV.

If you think I'm talking twaddle, the above picture was taken on a 1959 Praktica IV with the Meritar lens just last year. The exact camera and lens combination shown on the right on the picture above that.

As I mentioned, I have two of these Ludwig Meritars, they did not get a good press at the time they were new and since then more contemporary writers have tended to dismiss them, but they are far from the poor lens these writers make out. Okay, they are not a Zeiss Biotar or a Meyer-Optik Primotar either, but again they are not going to set you back £200 ! £20-40 will pick you up a working Meritar these days and will give you a nice old fashioned image. Try one.

So which of these old Praktica cameras is the best you may ask? Well there is very little in it, they are all very similar, my favourite is the original K.W. version, I got mine repaired and serviced last year, and it is a joy to use! However it is harder to focus with there not being a split image rangefinder to help you and the screen is a little dim.

So, for a regular user I would go for the last in the series, the V F. With the very bright Fresnel screen, spilt image range finder and an instant return mirror, makes it the most useable today I suppose, especially if it is your first Classic S.L.R. and you are used to more modern film cameras. What lens would I put on it ? Hehe, I'm going to be controversial here, a Super Takumar 55mm 1.8 lens off a Pentax! Yes, I know, but that is the beauty of m42 cameras, there are so many good lenses to choose from out there! Both German and Japanese.

For a Prasktica just sitting in a display cabinet, then I would of course go for a period German lens, the Meyer-Optik Primotar E 50mm 3.5 lens for example! But a good one is currently way above my budget.

It seems most of the less common versions of the Praktica IV and V series cameras are more often found in Germany still, both in shops and on eBay de. However they are more expensive for a start, you have VAT and postage on top which can double the price of the camera, so proceed with caution if buying from Germany.

However if money is not a problem, then buy from Germany, something like a IV BM with an alloy Tessar or Biotar with a nice East German leather case with the sloping front, so much nicer than the West German cases with the hard bulbus plastic fronts they were supplied with over here. Cosmetically the German market cameras are usually less worn and cleaner, the older Germans really tended to look after their stuff!

There is a bit of a scam though, some German dealers sell the 'no name' Praktica like it is a rare sought after model at between 300 and 400 Euros. Believe me you can turn any Praktica IV or V into a no name version in seconds! Expose any of the lettering on the front to any cleaner, both chemical or abrasive and the lettering will disappear in one wipe of your cloth whether you intended to do it or not, and leave no trace of the 60 plus years it was there!

So that is the scam, dealer accidently wipes the lettering off whilst cleaning the camera for re-sale, so thinks about it for a while then comes up with the no name version, sells it to a gullible collector for more money than if the lettering was still there! After that he wipes off the lettering on purpose tripling the price at the same time! You have been warned!

Which ever you buy, please budget for getting the Praktica serviced professionally. Believe me, it will make all the difference, the body and the lens if it is a German one, it will really be money well spent in the long run and after servicing, if you look after it and use it on a regular basis it will last you a life time!

I hope you like this post, if you are a regular reader, then some of it you will have read before in my early posts, but hopefully there will be something new to you.

Take care,

Phil

Praktica IV and V series of S.L.R.'s circa 1959 to 1965. A quick buyers guide and run down of these impressive German cameras.

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