Praktina Zeiss Flexon Kodak Gold 200

            A first color film with my Praktina IIa (year 1958) fitted with its Carl Zeiss Jena normal lens Flexon 1:2 f=50mm.

The camera was loaded with a 36-exposure Kodak Gold 200 film exposed for 200 ISO using an Autometer III Minolta light meter fitted with a 10° finder for selective measurements privileging the shadow areas. indoor 1/60s or 1/30s were used at full aperture to f/4.

Tropical Green Houses, February 28, 2024
Jardin Botanique de Lyon
Parc de la Tête d'Or
69006 Lyon 
France

After complete exposure, the film was processed by a local lab service using the C-41 protocol. The views were then digitized using a Sony A7 body fitted to a Minolta Slide Duplicator installed on a Minolta Auto Bellows III with a lens Minolta Bellow Macro Rokkor 50mm f/3.5. The RAW files obtained were processed without intermediate files in LR and edited to the final jpeg pictures.

All views of the film are presented in the dedicated album either in the printed framed versions and unframed full-size jpeg. 

About the camera and the lens : 

The Praktina IIa followed in 1958 the Praktina FX designed by the prestigious KW (Kamera Werk Niedersedlitz) German company in Dresden.

This specimen is the version 2 (code 110)  produced at about 25.000 exemplars from June 1958 to Mai 1960. Praktina camera's were very high grade precision and quality machines much more sophisticated than the Praktica and the Praktiflex also produced by KW. Praktina was a "system" SLR 35 mm camera with a an impressive range of possible accessories and lenses including large capacity 17m film back and several motors. 

My camera came with the mechanical 12-view motor and two Carl Zeiss normal lenses : a Tessar 1:2.8 f=50mm and a Flexon 1:2 f=50mm. This later Flexon lens was designed for the Praktina by Carl Zeiss Jena to modernize the old Biotar 1:2 f=58mm and to fulfill a more closer definition of a "normal lens" to the focal of 50mm. The lens is also much more compact. It was soon renamed "Pancolar" by Zeiss later on. 

The Praktina has its own bayonet mount that ressemble a bit to the Canon FD mount with a locking ring on the camera body.  The mount has a very large diameter. The IIa model has a new fully automatic diaphragm stop down system. With the Zeiss Flexon, the iris preset is indeed like with a modern camera. 

Praktina is a completely different camera compared to the Praktica IV. The body is very well equilibrated and more compact not very far for the Olympus OM-1. The design looks particularly modern and the camera is particularly pleasant to manipulate. 

The productiotn suddenlty stopped in May1960 after the governmental decision to drop down the imposed prices of all camera's DDR by 30%! Praktina was then likely too expensive to be produced normally. As consequence, the less expensive and less performant Praktica's continued when KW became part of the VEB Pentacon.

Taken on: March 1, 2024

Tags:

Lyon

Grand

Green

Houses

Parc

Tête

d'Or

69006

VEB

Kamera

Werke

Niedersedlitz

Dresden

Germany

35mm

German

vintage

SLR

year

1958

Praktina

IIa

Carl

Zeis

Jena

Flexon

1:2

f=50mm

Kodak

Gold

200

Sony

digitization

Minolta

Auto

Bellows

Slide

Duplicator

Macro

Rokkor

lens « less

Sets appears in: • Praktina IIa Zeiss Flexon Kodak Gold 200

Camera: Sony ILCE-7, 0.4 sec, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony ILCE-7
Lens:	----
Exposure Time:	0.4
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Manual
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.3 (Macintosh)
Show full info

Stats: 70 views

go back

Link to this photo view:
Link to this photo large view: