13 and 13 researched events on one shared scale. Ihagee 1912–present, Pentacon / Praktica 1919–present.
The axis stretches where either maker has research and collapses where neither does, so a year sits opposite the same year on both. Event counts differ because research depth differs, not because one company did less.
Before Exakta, Ihagee built an unusually broad range of plate, folding, roll-film, stereo, travel, and reflex cameras. Photorex, Viktor, Patent Duplex, Ultrix, Corona, Paff, Patent Klapp Reflex, and Nachtreflex show a factory learning many formats and mechanisms rather than waiting for one celebrated invention.
Ihagee Kamerawerk Katalog 1914 · IHAGEE: Its history until 1945 · Ihagee Non-Exakta Camera Types
Johan Steenbergen founded the Industrie- und Handelsgesellschaft in Dresden in spring 1912. The shortened Ihagee name soon entered formal use. In 1918 he joined with Emil Englisch and six experienced woodworkers to form Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co., bringing wooden camera construction more fully inside the business.
Geschichte des Ihagee-Kamerawerks 1912-1976 · Ihagee Kamerawerk Katalog 1914 · IHAGEE: Its history until 1945
A purpose-built works on Schandauer Strasse opened in 1923 and expanded as Ihagee grew. The factory combined woodworking and precision camera assembly while relying on outside optical makers for lenses. Its mature 1930s catalogs paired established plate and roll-film families with increasingly sophisticated reflex cameras.
Ihagee-Kameras, Juli 1937 · IHAGEE: Its history until 1945 · Ihagee Non-Exakta Camera Types
Karl Nuchterlein's 127-roll-film Standard Exakta appeared in 1933. The Kine Exakta followed in 1936 with a 24x36 mm frame, focal-plane shutter, waist-level finder, and interchangeable-lens bayonet. Together they turned Ihagee's reflex experience into a compact, extensible camera system.
Instructions for using the Kine-Exakta · Kine Exakta camera · Ihagee-Kameras, Juli 1937 · Die 35mm-Exakta-Baureihe des Ihagee-Kamerawerkes Dresden · IHAGEE: Its history until 1945
Camera production largely yielded to wartime subcontracting as Nazi authorities seized control of the foreign-owned firm. Steenbergen left Germany in 1942, Nuchterlein was lost in military service, and the February 1945 bombing of Dresden destroyed the Schandauer Strasse factory, forcing a physical and institutional restart.
Short history of Ihagee · Die 35mm-Exakta-Baureihe des Ihagee-Kamerawerkes Dresden · IHAGEE: Its history until 1945
Workers restarted Kine Exakta production at the former Delta works in 1945, first using a mixture of surviving and newly made parts. Exakta II followed in 1949, and the 1950 Exakta Varex made interchangeable waist-level and eye-level finders central to a professional 35 mm system.
Geschichte des Ihagee-Kamerawerks 1912-1976 · Short history of Ihagee · Uebersicht Exakta-/Exa-Modellreihen · Die 35mm-Exakta-Baureihe des Ihagee-Kamerawerkes Dresden
The simpler Exa brought the Exakta bayonet and interchangeable finder idea to a less costly body, while Exakta Varex, VX, IIa, IIb, VX 1000, and VX 500 carried the main line forward. A large outside-supplier lens and accessory network made the cameras especially adaptable for close-up, scientific, and technical photography.
Short history of Ihagee · Uebersicht Exakta-/Exa-Modellreihen · Die 35mm-Exakta-Baureihe des Ihagee-Kamerawerkes Dresden · Die Exa-Baureihe des Ihagee-Kamerawerkes Dresden
Ihagee revisited 6x6 after the war with a redesigned vertical Exakta, shown in 1952 and produced from 1953. It offered an ambitious medium-format SLR package, but persistent film-transport trouble ended the run after roughly 2,500 cameras, leaving 35 mm as the company's durable system.
Uebersicht Exakta-/Exa-Modellreihen · Die 35mm-Exakta-Baureihe des Ihagee-Kamerawerkes Dresden
Steenbergen established a West German Ihagee company that contested the Ihagee and Exakta names with Dresden. It introduced the Exakta Real in 1966 and later marketed Japanese-built Twin TL cameras. The western company was legally and industrially distinct from the Dresden works and was liquidated in October 1976.
Geschichte des Ihagee-Kamerawerks 1912-1976 · Short history of Ihagee · Exakta without Exakta mount
Pentacon took control of Ihagee development in 1964, incorporated the Dresden company into the combine in 1968, and ended its independent factory identity in 1970. Name-rights disputes encouraged VX and Elbaflex export markings, while product planning shifted toward Pentacon's Praktica architecture.
Geschichte des Ihagee-Kamerawerks 1912-1976 · Die 35mm-Exakta-Baureihe des Ihagee-Kamerawerkes Dresden · Die Exa-Baureihe des Ihagee-Kamerawerkes Dresden
Pentacon produced the Praktica L-derived Exakta RTL 1000 through 1973 and continued the Exa line after Ihagee disappeared as an independent works. Exa Ia, M42 Exa 1b, and Exa 1c reached 1987, with later assembly at Certo, extending the product lineage without restoring Ihagee as the manufacturer.
Geschichte des Ihagee-Kamerawerks 1912-1976 · Uebersicht Exakta-/Exa-Modellreihen · Die 35mm-Exakta-Baureihe des Ihagee-Kamerawerkes Dresden · Die Exa-Baureihe des Ihagee-Kamerawerkes Dresden
Ihagee West entered liquidation in 1976 as Exakta-badged Japanese OEM cameras complicated the final product boundary. The old Steenbergen partnership was deleted in 1996. Later uses of Exakta are trademark chapters, while the historic Dresden and West German camera companies no longer operate as manufacturers.
Geschichte des Ihagee-Kamerawerks 1912-1976 · Short history of Ihagee · Exakta without Exakta mount
Museums, specialist researchers, and international Exakta groups now preserve Ihagee cameras, manuals, catalogs, and specimen data. Their work keeps the Kine Exakta and its broad system visible while also clarifying the separate factories, mounts, OEM bodies, and legal entities that accumulated around the famous names.
Geschichte des Ihagee-Kamerawerks 1912-1976 · Kine Exakta camera · IHAGEE: Its history until 1945
Kamera-Werkstaetten Guthe & Thorsch grew in Dresden-Niedersedlitz and passed into the Noble family era. The works built the technical and manufacturing base from which the Praktiflex and Praktica SLR lines emerged, while remaining distinct from the Zeiss Ikon branch that later contributed the Pentacon name.
Entwicklung der Dresdner Fotoindustrie · Kombinat VEB Pentacon Dresden, 1945-1998
The Praktiflex placed a compact 35 mm reflex body and interchangeable screw-mount lens at the center of the Niedersedlitz program. Wartime disruption and postwar dispossession broke the private company, but Siegfried Boehm and the factory carried the camera concept into the state-owned period.
The first Praktica appeared in 1949 with the M42 x 1 lens thread. FX generations added flash synchronization and internal diaphragm actuation, while Praktina and Praktisix projects showed that the same works could pursue proprietary professional and medium-format systems alongside the mass-market Praktica.
Vintage Manuals · Entwicklung der Dresdner Fotoindustrie · Heritage
The East German state combined Kinowerke Dresden, Kamera-Werke Niedersedlitz, Altissa, Aspecta, and Welta as VEB Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden. The new enterprise inherited overlapping cameras, projectors, factories, and skills, then began pruning and reorganizing them for coordinated production.
Pentacon: Kamera- und Optiktradition aus Sachsen · Kombinat VEB Pentacon Dresden, 1945-1998
VEB Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden became VEB Pentacon Dresden in 1964. The new name joined the symbolism of five constituent factories with the established Contax-derived Pentacon camera name; Praktica, Pentina, Penti, and the new Pentacon Six remained product identities within the enterprise.
Pentacon: Kamera- und Optiktradition aus Sachsen · Entwicklung der Dresdner Fotoindustrie · Kombinat VEB Pentacon Dresden, 1945-1998
Praktica mat introduced through-the-lens metering in 1965, and the PL loading system followed in 1967. The nova, Super TL, and PL electronic branches translated these advances into cameras aimed at different levels of automation without abandoning the broad M42 lens system.
Vintage Manuals · Entwicklung der Dresdner Fotoindustrie · Heritage
Pentacon became the parent works of a combine in 1968, bringing the Goerlitz optical works and eastern Ihagee organization into a wider production network; other plants followed. Pentacon labels increasingly replaced older maker names, although design origin and factory responsibility remained product-specific.
Pentacon: Kamera- und Optiktradition aus Sachsen · Kombinat VEB Pentacon Dresden, 1945-1998
The Praktica L platform introduced a metal-blade focal-plane shutter and supported a large family of mechanical, metered, electrically coupled, interchangeable-finder, and automatic-exposure bodies. LLC, PLC, VLC, EE, LTL, MTL, and Super TL variants kept M42 central for two decades.
Praktica B cameras replaced the screw thread with an electrically coupled bayonet. B 200, B 100, BC, BCA, BCC, BCS, BM, and BMS bodies shared the new interface, while adapters accepted M42 lenses with reduced automation. Prakticar lenses became the native optical vocabulary.
Vintage Manuals · Praktica cameras and lenses · Praktica Lenses
Kombinat VEB Pentacon entered the larger Carl Zeiss Jena combine in 1985. Cameras, lenses, and precision products were now planned inside an even broader state organization, just as the BX generation attempted to modernize the Praktica bayonet line before political and monetary union.
Pentacon: Kamera- und Optiktradition aus Sachsen · Kombinat VEB Pentacon Dresden, 1945-1998 · Heritage
Pentacon Dresden GmbH was formed in July 1990, but the Treuhand announced liquidation on 2 October. The decision dismantled the large state enterprise, displaced thousands of workers, and scattered assets and records. Schneider and Noble successors carried different pieces of the Dresden tradition forward.
Kombinat VEB Pentacon Dresden, 1945-1998 · 02.10.1990: Die erste grosse Insolvenz
A smaller Schneider-associated successor began work in Dresden in 1991 and later became PENTACON GmbH Foto- und Feinwerktechnik. It continued the Praktica BX 20 S into 2001 while shifting toward precision engineering and scanner products; later branded compacts did not represent the old SLR factory system.
History of Schneider-Kreuznach · VEB Pentacon Dresden - Vom DDR-Grossbetrieb zum Niedergang des Dresdner Kamerabaus
After Dresden SLR production ended, Praktica continued on imported compact and digital cameras and later outdoor optics. Pentacon GmbH ceased operating and was removed from the register in 2024, while Praktica Limited maintains the consumer brand: continuity of name without continuity of the historic camera works.
Heritage · VEB Pentacon Dresden - Vom DDR-Grossbetrieb zum Niedergang des Dresdner Kamerabaus
Read either maker on its own: Ihagee · Pentacon / Praktica
