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2026-07-22 Exakta 500 Third of Three Exakta Articles


This Exakta 500 (1966-69) was by far the best looking of the three Exaktas I was given. They were all broken. This camera wouldn’t cock. You could wind the shutter up and as you took the tension off the advance lever the shutter would simply run down again.

    It was a pity, as the camera was a joy to play with. This is the shutter dial. It rotates in a complete 360º. In general you set the shutter speed opposite that hollow black triangle on the camera’s deck. But if you want to take a flash bulb picture you set that white dot on the dial opposite the red bulb symbol on the deck. Electronic flash you set the white dot opposite the lightening bolt symbol. If it feels like there is very little resistance to rotating the dial you are correct. Below the dial inside the camera there is a barrel rotating. The barrel has slots cut into it that a shutter adjusting arm “feels” to change the actual shutter speeds.
    
    Unlike the other Exakta’s, the film advance on this camera is on the right side of the pentaprism hump. It has in its hub both a film reminder dial and a frame counting dial. The small metal post is the button to press so you can rewind the film (it allows the advancing sprockets to spin backwards).





    The back release/lock is a small rotating disc concentric with the tripod socket. When the two red dots are lined up the entire back comes off








    The film feeds from left to right. The shutter winds the blinds vertically. Taking the camera apart requires loosening the advance sprocket shaft at the bottom (it is held in by two screws). Then the two silver-headed screws either side of the prism window (on this side, there two more on the top front) and some black screws located at the top of the film chambers allow the entire camera works to be pulled up out of the body. It is really clever!
    

    You can see the aforementioned two screws in the top front that have to be removed to take the camera apart. The shutter release is upper right to the lens mount (same as all the other Exaktas) and the PC flash fitting mirrors its location on the other side of the lens mount.
    
    When I tried lighter fluid to fix the shutter problem I caused an unsightly delamination of the viewing screen all around the edges. It doesn’t make the camera unusable. But the shutter stayed broken…









    That red bit of plastic is an indicator of the shutter/frame wound condition. Winding the shutter pushes the plastic to a stored position, out of the viewfinder. When the shutter fires the arm falls down and the red wedge appears in the view through the finder.











    The detached camera back is a work of art all by itself. It curves in all the right places and the pressure plate is textured to allow the film to move easily while the pressure is kept even so the film stays flat.
    
    The lever to the left of the eyepiece locks the shutter. Note again how nicely the camera’s back the whole camera for that matter— is curved. 









    The camera has fine touches, like this stamped into the prism housing.















The Exakta lens mount is a three lobed bayonet. The lenses that had stopped down (“automatic”) apertures had arms that—as depressed towards the front of body mounted shutter release—stop down the lens.







    
    The aperture stop-down arm has a threaded cable release socket.
 

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