Praktica FX

[richard_]

<p>Interesting history and shots. Next time your at the indian rest. ask them to make you a 'aloo paratha'. I'll think you'll like it...</p>

[Mike Gammill]

Good, informative post. I have the later FX-2 which had been in a junk box in an unair conditioned storage building for

about 15 or 16 years. Surpisingly, it worked after a little cleaning. I have the CZ Carl Zeiss Tessar.

[Alan Johnson]

<p>Thanks for the interesting post, <strong>JDM</strong>.<br>

They seemed to be keen on adding detachable prisms in those days, although from the items for sale on auction sites I have never seen one for the FX so conclude that not many actually bought them.</p>

 

[Mike Gammill]

<p>How well did the detatchable prisms work? </p>

[JDMvW]

<p>@ Mike,<br>

the prism worked fine. As I said earlier, there was not nearly so much "tunnel vision" as I had expected, nor was the image too dark when the lens (f/1.9) was open.<br>

It was obviously a 'kludge' motivated by the twin pressures of the Zeiss Contax S and D on the one hand, and the beginning of add-on prisms for the Exakta on the other.</p>

<p>If you look at the earliest Prakticas with a permanent prism (the IV and V family), you will note that the prism (like this detachable one) sits very high up, as well.</p><div></div>

[JDMvW]

<p>It may of of interest to some to note that the path to full-scale public ownership (VEB) status in the "Soviet Occupied Zone (SBZ) and the nascent DDR was not direct.</p>

<p>Some companies remained partially or totally 'private' while operating under the controls of a 'democratic' state for a while. In the end, pretty much all camera production in the mature, Stalinist DDR ended up in one large public company- VEB Pentacon.</p>

<p>So Ihagee, KW, and Zeiss Jena would have had separate direction up to a point.</p>

[chuck_foreman1]

Thanks for the the very informative historic information. I think the slow disintegration of individuality as well as partially "private" to the VEB were very important aspects of the East production and thankfully gave us such a wide variety of

goods. Arguably, this also led to too much duplication effort and unneccesary competition that might have taken another turn on history. The FX with and without prism would be something I'd like to play with just for fun. I have concentrated more so on the "Zeiss" stuff an little on the east sister companies. At some later point though they all start to melt together.

[brett_rogers]

<p><strong>JDM</strong>, I hope you don't mind if I revive this discussion? It's relevant for me because, after acquiring an FX myself some weeks back, I've had my first film processed, and have found some exposure problems similar to those displayed in a few of your images above.</p>

<p>Here are a few banal images from the roll (all made with the standard waist level viewfinder on Kodak Ultramax 400, no edits, V700):<br /> <br />This was taken in the town of New Norfolk in Tasmania's Derwent Valley and is around 30 minutes from the state capital, Hobart. New Norfolk celebrated its bicentenary a year or two ago and is one of the older towns in Tasmania. This looks to be a workers cottage and probably dates from the late 19th Century. Lens was my 135mm f/3.5 Super Takumar.<br /><br /> <img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8428/7843217030_53aa5067cd_z.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="400" /></p>

<p>I've always had a liking for Italian vehicles having owned a few Ducatis and Moto Guzzis. So when I encountered this red Alfa parked near Hobart's historic port area one Sunday I needed little incentive to take a couple of shots. Lens for this and following images was the 35mm f/3.5 Super Takumar. Meter reading gave an exposure, as expected, of "sunny 16". Shutter was 1/500 and aperture f/11 or f/16. You can clearly see the dark band across the right side of the frame; exposure generally is OK.<br /> <img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7257/7843217546_fc7d82012d_z.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="390" /></p>

<p>This is the view looking North along historic Salamanca Place. It's famous for its Saturday street market, which sees the whole street filled from end to end with a variety of stalls every week. On Sundays it's still busy, as people visit the cafes, pubs, boutique shops and art galleries located in the converted early 19th Century warehouses built to service Van Diemen's Land's busiest port. I think the shutter speed here was 1/200 or maybe even 1/100 due to the overcast. Again, a slight dark band is evident along the right, but not as pronounced here.<br /><br /> <img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8301/7843217948_38c403130f_z.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="400" /></p>

<p>One more shot of that red Alfa. I've had quite a bit of experience with waist level finders the last few years via my Hasselblad and various Rollei TLRs, but the smaller size of the FXs 35mm size viewfinder definitely takes a little getting used to. I've since acquired the optional prism for the FX which will be useful for portrait orientation, but I'll persevere with the waist level for landscape images, as it is so effective for candid images out in the streets or markets. The dreaded dark band can again be seen along the right edge.<br /><br /> <img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7255/7843218452_bf88d8a154_z.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="382" /></p>

[brett_rogers]

<p>I should add that the camera is not as purchased and has received some attention. Although I've done relatively little tinkering with focal plane shutters, I've had a good run of success with various Synchro Compur shutters fitted to a few Rolleis and eight or nine Contaflice of various models, amongst other makes. The design of the earlier Praktica focal plane cloth shutter seems fairly uncomplicated in comparison to other types, and the easy to remove bottom cover, and separate film rail plate over the film gate makes access to the curtain spindles about as good as it gets without stripping the mechanism. So it seemed a good place to start learning about some of the basics of FP shutter cleaning and adjustment when I adopted a stray Praktica IV that needed a good home last year. When this FX arrived in lovely original condition (photo to come) for the princely sum of AUD $15 including postage, I felt it was worth making an effort to get it working properly again.</p>

<p>It was actually running reasonably sweetly as per the sellers description (he was offloading several Praktica bodies after selling the original lenses for same for considerably more dollars). But the slow speed escapement was was stalling a little, so I removed the bottom cover to clean and carefully lubricate the mechanisms within.</p>

<p>The film rail plate was also removed, and the curtain spindles were each treated to a dash of synthetic watch oil. After exercising the shutter dozens of times at various speeds it was running very sweetly (and still is) so it received its first roll of film in my hands. But I'm hoping to get some input about what the cause of the dark band across the right side as seen in some previous images could be. Clearly the relationship between the curtains is the issue.</p>

<p>I've done some research of course, and have all the Tomosy repair manuals. In his article about the Nova in his first repair guide volume, [<em>Camera Maintenance & Repair</em>, by Thomas Tomosy; Amherst Media; 1993] he states that:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>There is a flat L-shaped spring on the left hand side, under the film gate. Watch out for this spring. If you lose it, or someone has lost it already, there is no way to adjust the high speeds properly. No matter how much or how little tension you put on the curtains, the second curtain will catch up with the first.<br /> What you normally do in this situation is tension the first curtain to speed it up, or slacken the second to slow it down. However, this method doesn't work with the Nova, as the first curtain and related mechanism has too much inertia. There is more mass (more gears) to the first curtain than to the second. All the gears visible on photo 25.3 spin with the first curtain<br />[25.3 is a detail of gears and shafts under wind side of top cover]</p>

</blockquote>

<p>There was no sign of this mythical spring to delay the second curtain inside my example when I removed the film rail plate (nor, indeed, inside the other example of the FX I have, which awaits replacement of a torn shutter curtain). There is what looks like a friction pad attached to the underneath of the plate and would appear to bear on the wind side spindle for the first curtain if I am not mistaken. This is present on both my FXs.</p>

<p>As <strong>Subbarayan</strong> has so helpfully documented in previous PN discussions <a href="00YILb">here</a> and <a href="00aKtc">here</a> it seems the retarding spring is not as omnipresent as the good Mr Tomosy would have us believe. And I could see no sign of the adjustment screw for same. If Tomosy is to be believed, increasing the first curtain tension is a futile exercise. Decreasing the spring tension of the second curtain would appear to be the best alternative, however he also advises against this. What to do? The options would appear to be:</p>

<ol>

<li>Disregard his comments, and adjust the spring tension anyway (he is, after all, wrong about the universal presence of the spring) If so: which ones, and by how much? Or;</li>

<li>Fabricate a spring brush myself, in order to slightly retard the second curtain.</li>

</ol>

<p>Any input on the above from the forums esteemed Praktica devotees would be appreciated. Although a self-professed Contaflex addict, I've taken quite a shine to its Eastern cousin, and even lashed out on a pre-set red T Biotar for it the other day (no longer a bargain-priced lens!). So I'm actually quite keen to use it a bit, or even, more than a bit, and would like to try to fix this fault.</p>

<p> </p>

[JDMvW]

<p>More is always welcome. :)</p>