Ihagee Kine Exakta (1936)

Name: Ihagee Kine Exakta
Brand: Ihagee

The camera that invented the 35mm SLR, and then spent the next half-century being imitated.

Overview

The first thing to say about the Kine Exakta is the obvious thing: it is the first 35mm SLR camera. Ihagee introduced it in 1936 and started a new category of photography. Everything from the Nikon F to the last digital SLR standing in a thrift store window descends from the idea this camera put on the table - a single-lens reflex, 35mm film, and the image you see through the lens is the image you get.

That sounds unremarkable now. In 1936 it was not. The Kine Exakta is a 35mm SLR camera, full stop, and beyond that classification the hard specifications are thin. There is no documented lens mount, no shutter type or speed range, no dimensions, no weight, no original price, and no production end year. What survives is the claim itself: the first 35mm SLR, from a manufacturer, Ihagee, that the historical record credits with establishing itself as one of the most innovative camera makers on earth on the strength of it.

The contemporary Ihagee manual does document the design philosophy. The Kine Exakta was, in the company's own words, in good repute because of its many-sidedness and its reliable construction. The manual lists what it considered the camera's most effective advantages, and the list reads like a checklist the whole SLR industry would spend the next forty years working through: no parallax error, because there is no difference whatsoever between the image on the ground glass and the negative; a clear and magnified picture on the ground glass; quick and easy lens interchange by bayonet mounting; and a focal plane shutter running from 1/1000 down to 12 seconds.

Twelve seconds, on a consumer camera, in 1936. The manual also notes a self-portrait mechanism, fully automatic film advance by winding the shutter, and a picture counter for 36 pictures, the standard 35mm load. It was, the documentation claims, especially fit for colour pictures, which in the mid-1930s was still a selling point and not an assumption.

Historical Context

The Kine Exakta did not appear out of nowhere. Ihagee had introduced its first Exakta, a roll-film SLR, in 1933. That camera established the reflex viewing concept but not the 35mm format. The Kine Exakta followed in 1936 and married the SLR idea to 35mm film, the combination the rest of the industry eventually standardised on. Accounts of the period describe the introduction as launching an entirely new category of photography.

The Exakta system, as it is generally described, continued through the Varex and VX series with interchangeable viewfinders. Whether every one of those later cameras descends directly from the Kine Exakta or from the broader Exakta line is something the available documentation does not settle cleanly. What is clear is that the Kine Exakta is where the name and the format came together.

The camera was sold with a case, "in so far as such are available," per the manual. Even accessories were not guaranteed in 1936. The same document lists the lenses the camera was set up to take: a Zeiss Tessar at 1:2.8 and another at 1:3.5, a Zeiss Biotar, a Victar at 1:2.9, and a Trioplan at 1:2.9. The Tessars, the Victar and the Trioplan all shared a 32mm front mount diameter. The Biotar, with its larger aperture, took a 42mm mount. Focal lengths were quoted in centimetres, 5cm for the Tessars, Victar and Trioplan and 5.8cm for the Biotar, which is how the period wrote it. The angles of view were listed alongside, 45° for the 5cm lenses and 40° for the Biotar.

Ihagee also documented a planned accessory programme. The company intended to resume production of a range of special rings, extension tubes, and attachments. There were special rings with bayonet joint and bayonet socket, extension tubes at 5mm, 15mm and 30mm, an extensible intermediate ring, a microscope attachment, and small and large photo-flash bulb attachments. The bayonet rings were necessary because the extension tubes themselves were screw-threaded, so the rings adapted one to the other. Either ring alone could serve as an extension tube. The manual also notes a special knife for cutting the exposed film, and the fact that with double extension the camera could take pictures in original size - that is, 1:1 macro, on a 1936 SLR.

The Kine Exakta was a platform as well as a first, with a documented expansion path into micrography and macrography. The "many-sidedness" Ihagee claimed came down to a bayonet mount, a focal plane shutter, and a growing set of rings and tubes that let the same body do everything from flash portraits to photomicrography.