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The 1970 EXAKTA camera

A wonderful and generous German friend (now honorary Welsh) asked if I would like to adopt her father’s camera, once a treasured piece of kit. Her father is in his 80s and is sadly no longer able to use the camera with his sight deteriorating.

Little did I know that the (West) German Exakta Twin TL is from 1970 and this model is one of the last Exaktas to be produced in East and West Germany. The Ihagee Kamerawerk company was an early experimenter with the 35mm film format (the origin of the name Exakta). This make of camera was the first with a built-in light meter and compact single lens reflex. The original factory was in Dresden (then Frankfurt and West Berlin) and for a time, Ihagee Kamerawerk was one of the largest photographic companies in the world.

It feels a little unusual and exciting to suddenly have a camera from a company with a 1912 Dutch inventor origin and a complicated history of wartime and post-war Soviet and East-West Germany ownership/brand wrangling. 1970 was also the time Germany was starting to hand over assembly to Japan with their growing competitive expertise.

The camera has a very metallic solid feel and smell, with a distinctive and satisfying mechanical soundscape, befitting of the name ‘EXAKTA’, but unfamiliar to someone growing up first using 80s compact cameras and later digital SLRs. It feels like it has had a careful and loving owner. I am certainly drawn to it, although did not realise (on initial use) that the light meter needs a tiny mercury battery! So the first photos are certainly ‘experimental’ and a little unexpectedly ethereal/ghostly.

January 6th, 2026