2026-07-20 Exakta II—1st of 3 Exakta SLR Cameras

 I have a long history with Exakta and Exa cameras. Back in 2000 I wrote six pages of AllPhotography (my newsletter I wrote from 2000 to 2010) about the Exaktas I had collected. I was given three more recently. 

    The oldest is this Exakta II. It had a non removable waist level finder that was interlocked with the camera body. If the waist level hood is closed the camera is locked and the shutter won’t fire.

    Exakta’s were a little strange for those of you used to modern SLR’s. They have two shutter dials, seem to be designed for left-handed users (although they are not, more later), had built-in film slicers, had front facing shutter releases, had definitely non-standard flash sync connections, were built unlike other cameras…the list is almost endless. They also had more accessories than almost any other camera, had more lens companies making lenses for them than anyone else, were the choice for scientists and professors, but not the choice for photojournalists…again you could go on and on.

    

    Exakta’s had a triangular body style. Personally I find them a little hard to hold. They seem to try to squeeze out of your grip. The reason they were designed with the advance lever and shutter release on the left was the creator’s belief that the focus was the most important action in taking photographs, so the dominate right hand had to be free to focus the lens. 

    Rewinding the film was another function that seemed harder with an Exakta. You had a small key on the bottom—the rewind button was on the top in the cluster that includes the 300º advance lever and shutter dial—that could only be turned ½ turn at a time. 
To make up for that—and for those scientists who needed just a few frames at a time for immediate developing—this Exakta and many others had a film knife.     That small knob (bottom left) next to the rewind end unscrewed so you could draw a hook shaped knife across the film while it was still inside the camera. You could use two cassettes—one feed, one take-up—and cut the film off so you could take the film out to process it. If a darkroom was close, you could simply slice the film and retire to the dark to pull the bare exposed film out to load in a tank.
    Also note the externally mounted (European sized) tripod screw. Due to the Exakta’s internal construction there is no space to have a tripod socket recessed into the body.

    When taking an Exakta apart you remove select bits from the top deck, notably the advance lever and shutter dial on the left and the slow shutter dial on the right. Don’t move these bits too far away. You then remove two screws on both exposed plates and then reinstall the bits you have removed so you can play with the shutter and mirror box when they come out the top as a unit. Those two silver headed screws in the strip along the camera’s top (at each corner of the waist level finder) are removed, as well as select screws inside the film chamber. Then you carefully pull the guts out of the body shell. It is best doing this last maneuver with the lens removed and the body face down on a flat work surface, as the shutter button is loose in the camera body. Don’t fret, it isn’t spring loaded or particularly prone to escape, but it is surprising anyone would design a camera like this.

    The finder is surprisingly talented. As mentioned earlier it has to be erected so the shutter will work. The back three sides simply pop up and have to be manually closed one at a time. This image shows the rectangular magnifier erected (there is a small knob visible at the top right of the front standard that will swing the magnifier up. This magnifier does a great job of giving you a fine view of the ground glass for framing and focus.
    

    The front standard has a lid for the magnifier.
    

Prop the lid up and you now have an eye-level metal frame.

    That couples with a peep hole at the back to make a speed finder for sports and other motion related tasks. Due to the single mirror viewing arrangement the image you would see through the waist level view would be reversed left to right. 
    

    The waist level magnifier is a work of art with curves and hinging and a long-shafted release catch.
    

    The magnifier stores inside the front with clearance to allow you to close the side and back baffles. It looks slightly careless, but has worked and worked well for over 60-years.
    

    The slight curve cut into the side baffle plates couples with the slightly bowed shaping to make a pretty effective viewing tunnel.
    

    The top left controls look pretty tightly packed. Starting at the left you have the frame counter located at the hub of the advance lever. It is manually set by you rotating the dial counter-clockwise (in the arrow’s direction) to set “1” after the initial roll-in of three frames.

The advance lever rotates forward narrowly clearing the flip up tab. The shutter dial has bulb and sync speed (Z), then 25, 50, 100, 150, 250, 500 and 1000 sec. Slower speeds are on the slow speed/self-timer shutter dial, on the other side of the finder. You can turn the shutter dial in the arrow’s direction to rewind the focal plane shutter (for double exposures).

    That post you see, now the advance lever is out of the way, is just a stop for the advance lever when it swings home.
    

    To unlock the advance motion of the film sprocket wheels you flip up the small metal tab located between the advance/frame counter and the shutter speed selector. This allows the film to be rewound.
    This camera had a shutter that didn’t fire. I managed to get the focal plane curtains working together—sweeping across the frame—by squirting a little lighter fluid in the tracks and repeatedly working the shutter. I didn’t manage to get anything close to slower speeds working, or to get the mirror to flip up and reset when the shutter is wound on. For all my talk of getting to the works I only managed to dive that deep with the most modern of the Exaktas, the 500. 
And then I didn’t succeed…