What, one of those flappy mirror monstrosities? Yep; but it’s for an historical cause.
The idea of looking through the lens to compose and focus an image goes back to the very early days of photography, with the first SLR camera being credited to Mr. E.W. Smith and his Monocular Duplex in 1884.
Providing SLR facilities in large format cameras was easy enough; but building them into a small body and making them sufficiently effective to allow accurate focusing was more of a challenge; and it wasn’t until the mid-1930s that solutions for 35mm cameras emerged. The first to crack the problem was the Russian made Sport which was prototyped in 1934 and went into production in 1937.
But unfortunately for the Russians, their extended prototyping period meant that the German company Ihagee could release the Kine Exakta in 1936 and thus claim to have the world’s first production 35mm SLR (although it probably didn’t seem that much of a big deal at the time.
Historical enough for me to pick one up, a post-war version and therefore cheap (and with the name changed on the front plate to “Exacta”, presumably to make it more export friendly).
Haven’t tried putting a film through it yet but it seems quite straightforward. Here is some advice on the shutter, for example:
*There are two of them - one for short speeds and one for long speeds and self timer. Using the short speeds from 1/25 to 1/1000, B and Z is quite simple. Cock the fast shutter with hte film wind lever an set the speed with the disc on the left. (You have to pull up the disc and rotate it in the direction of the arrow until the inner dot matches the desired speed number.) B means Bulb mode; shutter stays open until the release button is pressed. Z means that shutter opens for the first press of the release button and closes for the second - remaining open between the two.
To use long exposure times you have to cock the fast shutter and set the left disc to Z or B. Then cock the slow shutter turning the right disc counterclockwise until it stops and set the desired long speed using the longer scale (from 1/5 to 12).
The self timer can be accessed using the shorter scale (from 1/5 to 6) on the right side disc. If you want to use long exposition with the self timer you just cock the fast timer and set it to B or Z. Then you cock the slow shutter and set the desired time on the shorter scale.
To use short times with the self timer you should cock the fast shutter and set it to the desired speed. Then you cock the slow shutter and set it to any speed on the shorter scale.
So you have 20 normal speeds and 15 with self timer! Sophisticated enough? And one more thing. You cannot release the shutter with the finder hood closed; there is a shutter lock mechanism preventing unwanted expositions. *
So, there you go, easy.
The lens is a Carl Zeiss Jena 50mm F3.5 which will presumably take reasonable photos should I ever work out how to use the camera.
750 grams of German engineering with a claim to a small part of photography history, definitely deserves a space on the shelf.