The definitive equipment listing for Prakticas on the internet
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An introduction to camerasAfter the war, Zeiss Ikon of the same city introduced the Contax S, the first volume-produced 35mm reflex with a pentaprism for eye-level viewing, which used a slightly larger 42mm screw lens mount. After a round of corporate restructuring, the Zeiss company became integrated into KW, and while the Contax (which was labelled as Pentacon) range continued production for a while, the Praktica range acquired the Contax screw mount which subsequently became an international standard. Subsequently a new range of Prakticas was introduced featuring a new bayonet mount, which was made concurrently with the screw-mount models for a number of years. Praktica cameras can be divided into several generations:The earliest ones all feature waist-level finders, then came the IV/V series which employed the late model chassis but with a permanently attached pentaprism and further refinements. A complete chassis redesign was seen in the Praktica nova series, and then the long-lived L-series featuring a steel-bladed shutter followed. The bayonet-mount B-series were all fully electronically controlled, and was built in two distinct forms of its main chassis. As one of the progenitors of the Praktica, the Contax/Pentacon series is also featured here, and so is the Praktina series, modular cameras featuring cutting-edge technology at the time. The Praktisix/Pentacon six cameras were long-lived medium-format models, and the Pentacon super was a no-holds-barred professional camera which did not enjoy the success it deserved. by Samuel Tang | |
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