Reminiscing

I visited the East German Praktica factory in the late 70s, while the wall was still up. It was like a third world country. Horrible. Depressing. Sobering. We certainly made a damn good job of flattening Dresden, which was still a charred derelict mess in many places.

The war was before my time, but I have no wish to turn back time on any aspect of it. Their cameras from the 60s, 70s and 80s were dreadfully crude and clunky.

Shortly after, I went to visit various Canon plants in Japan. Of course it was night and day. You could hardly believe that both companies had similar backgrounds in many ways.
 
Yeah, I suppose I'm looking at it through tinted glasses but probably like a lot of us it was the camera I started off with.
 
Interesting to hear about your visit to Dresden. I have been to the city more recently (2004/5) and seen the restoration of the bombed Church. It is a credit to Praktica that the cameras produced were capable of such good results. Have you been to Minsk the home of Belmo? It is also a great city to visit with lots of photo opportunities.
 
My first SLR was a Practica 1VF. It had the choice of 3 standard lenses, I had the top end 2.8 Tessar. No instant return mirror - it went up and stayed up until you wound on.

Oddly few people have heard of the 1VF today...

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That is old Cedric!

I remember the Domiplan lens in the pic - one of the worst lenses I've ever used. It was a Cooke triplet design I think. Your Tessar (my dad had one on a Praktica MTL) was an exotic 4-elements.

I had a Zenit 3M from late 60s. To be fair, I took some pretty good pictures with it, and its Helios 58mm f/2 lens, but as a camera, I don't miss it in the slightest. Longest shutter speed 1/30sec, and that was also max flash sync with a magnesium flash bulb! :eek:
 
The three lenses Hoppy in order of quality were Meritar, Domiplan and Tessar IIRC.

I bought the 1VF brand new around 1963-64. The Pentax S1a and SV were the cameras to drool over - also current at that time.
 
I started in 1972 with a Praktica L.

Over the years have also owned the LTL,PLC3, MTL3, MTL5, B200,BCA,BC1,BCX and BX20, I still have them all plus a fair selection of lenses and flashguns.

They still get used and I have found them to be very reliable, easy to use and in their day good value for money.

I notice today that quite a number of the Pentacon, Prakticar and Zeiss lenses produced for these cameras are being sought after as a cheap way to get good quality optics on other brands, I have a Zeiss 50mm F1.4 in Praktica B fitting, excellent lens, so too is the Zeiss 135mm F2.8 which I also have and use both of these on my 350d via a Hoya FD/EF adapter.

John:)
 
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