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Visit to Nobby's Sunday 6.1.13Visit to Nobby's Sunday 6.1.13 - The iconic lighthouse at the top of Newcastle's Nobby's headland is only open once a month on Sundays. This photo is from our first time 'up top' in Jan 2013.
Trials with through the viewfinder photography, using 35mm cameras Voigtländer Vito CD Viewfinder with Olympus Stylus 1030SW as taking camera.
Gorman House Markets, Canberra, ACT, Australia
© Dirk HR Spennemann 2009, All Rights Reserved
I won past week this Praktina IIa body (no lenses included) with its waist viewfinder (that was my main interest in fact), on eBay France for 35€.
The speed selector was stuck but the camera was operating on the fixed time of 1/125s. The film plate (that is a high precision glass plate on the Praktina's, like on the Leica M series) is missing. With a watchmaker oil stick I added a minimum amount of watch Möbius synthetic oil 9020 between the exposure time disk and the upper deck of the camera. This soon unblocked the disk and all times are operating. The second shutter curtains (the one exposed after shutter release is not in a bad shape and even better than my other Praktina IIa.
The camera back of Praktina's could be interchanged so I mounted the correct camera back on my other Praktina for a test film.
The serial number is posterior to my first Praktina and the deck button of a little different size. The camera was used here with a Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar normal lens 1:2.8 f=50mm with semi-automatic diaphragm that is not operative on the IIa series but designed for the previous Praktina FX. The final version of Praktina's had double iris command for both automatic and semi-automatic diaphragm. Here it still possible to operate the diaphragm manually (no pre-selection).
For the test film I loaded a Fomapan 400 36-exposure film that I exposed for 250 ISO that is the real sensitivity of this film from the technical data. I used the Carl Zeiss Jena normal lens 1:2.8 f=50mm with a 49mm screw-on yellow filter except for the 4 last views. No additional shade hood was used since this CZJ Tessar lens has already a build-in protection with the front lens very recessed. I assumed a filter coefficient of 2 and exposed the film with the yellow filter for 125 ISO using an Autometer III Minolta light meter fitted with a 10° finder for selective measurements privileging the shadow areas.
For the first time I used my new Peak Design Leach strap system that is quite safe and comfortable to wear.
Parc. de la Cerisaie - Villa Gillet, March 5, 2024
69004 Lyon
France
After complete exposure, the film was revealed using Adox Adonal (Agfa Rodinal) developper at dilution 1+25 and 20°C for 6 min. The film was then digitalized 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. Small light leaks from the second curtain (the one exposed after firing the shutter) were noticed. They occasionally were removed from the pictures during their processing. It is then necessary to advance the film readily after each pictures or to cap the lens to avoid these leaks.
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About my other Praktina IIa camera and its accompaning two Carl Zeiss Jena normal lenses :
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 production 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.