Paulo J Moreira
Prakticamat
Behold, an historic camera. It doesn’t look much of a landmark, yet this Praktica was the finest that Europe had to offer in the SLR world. Launched in 1965, it was the first European SLR with TTL metering, arriving a year later after the Spotmatic.
Unfortunately, this Nova chassis proved to be a nightmare for Pentacon, the cameras quickly got a very bad reputation, especially the shutter. In an effort to improve the camera and the brand’s image, they decided to launch an upmarket version, even daring to call it a professional camera, the Prakticamat.
Not a lot of camera of european camera manufacturers were left in 1965, but to have this Prakticamat as Europe’s most sophisticated offer speaks a lot of how far behind were the SLRs from Zeiss Ikon or Leica. Let’s not trash the Prakticamat too quickly, its design is original, balanced and served as inspiration to design the real professional Pentacon Super and almost 20 years later, Porsche would incorporate into the design language of the Contax cameras some Prakticamat styling cues, like the shutter speed dial on the left, or the big button on the the front to activate the meter.
The camera is well finished and has stood the test of time rather well, bearing in mind that this unit is nr.1400, it must have been one of the earliests. Not a lot of them were built, just about 25.000 units,a drop in the sea of 9 million Prakticas produced. I think that no one got convinced about the Pro side of the camera. Apart from the TTL metering, the specs are ordinary, although this model has all the standardized shutter speeds from B to 1/1000th, something absent from the lower siblings. The viewfinder is rather small, but surprisingly bright. The split image rangefinder is simply huge, one of the biggest I have ever seen. The viewfinder is far from uncluttered, with a yellow colored rectangle on the right with the needle indication and a red flag on the left to warn you that the shutter is not coked, a feature that would stay right to the last Praktica built in the 90’s. The shutter might be trouble prone, but it’s relatively quiet, compared to the next generation of L cameras.
This rather poor proposition of a professional camera prompted Pentacon to massively invest in a true alternative to the Nikon F, the Pentacon Super and to come up with a range of highly innovative and reliable cameras in 1969, the L series. There is nothing like the bitter taste of defeat to spur revenge!
Prakticamat
Behold, an historic camera. It doesn’t look much of a landmark, yet this Praktica was the finest that Europe had to offer in the SLR world. Launched in 1965, it was the first European SLR with TTL metering, arriving a year later after the Spotmatic.
Unfortunately, this Nova chassis proved to be a nightmare for Pentacon, the cameras quickly got a very bad reputation, especially the shutter. In an effort to improve the camera and the brand’s image, they decided to launch an upmarket version, even daring to call it a professional camera, the Prakticamat.
Not a lot of camera of european camera manufacturers were left in 1965, but to have this Prakticamat as Europe’s most sophisticated offer speaks a lot of how far behind were the SLRs from Zeiss Ikon or Leica. Let’s not trash the Prakticamat too quickly, its design is original, balanced and served as inspiration to design the real professional Pentacon Super and almost 20 years later, Porsche would incorporate into the design language of the Contax cameras some Prakticamat styling cues, like the shutter speed dial on the left, or the big button on the the front to activate the meter.
The camera is well finished and has stood the test of time rather well, bearing in mind that this unit is nr.1400, it must have been one of the earliests. Not a lot of them were built, just about 25.000 units,a drop in the sea of 9 million Prakticas produced. I think that no one got convinced about the Pro side of the camera. Apart from the TTL metering, the specs are ordinary, although this model has all the standardized shutter speeds from B to 1/1000th, something absent from the lower siblings. The viewfinder is rather small, but surprisingly bright. The split image rangefinder is simply huge, one of the biggest I have ever seen. The viewfinder is far from uncluttered, with a yellow colored rectangle on the right with the needle indication and a red flag on the left to warn you that the shutter is not coked, a feature that would stay right to the last Praktica built in the 90’s. The shutter might be trouble prone, but it’s relatively quiet, compared to the next generation of L cameras.
This rather poor proposition of a professional camera prompted Pentacon to massively invest in a true alternative to the Nikon F, the Pentacon Super and to come up with a range of highly innovative and reliable cameras in 1969, the L series. There is nothing like the bitter taste of defeat to spur revenge!