In 1938, as war clouds started to gather in post-Depression Europe, designers at the KW plant in the suburbs of Dresden in eastern Germany unveiled a new SLR.
The Praktiflex was one of only three SLR designs to see the light of day in the 1930s, alongside the Soviet Sport and Ihagee’s famous Kine Exakta. The Praktiflex sported a TLR-style waist-level viewing hood and was the first small-scale SLR to have a mirror that returned to viewing position after the shutter was fired.
The Praktiflex had another first: it was the first SLR camera to use screw-mount lenses. This seemingly simple feature – a lens mount with no moving parts – had already been used in Leica rangefinders since the 1920s. A thread mount was simple to construct. The Praktiflex’s thread, at 40.5mm, was a little wider than the Leica’s 39mm, but it paved the way towards a camera revolution arguably almost as seismic as the first Leica itself.
The Praktiflex was an innovative camera that should have been destined for success; the world war that started a year after its release essentially killed its career, though examples would continue to trickle out of KW’s factory until 1949.
That same year, with the factory now behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany, an improved version of the camera known as the Praktica appeared with a new lens mount of 42mm. This “universal screw mount” had no proprietary patent. It provided an easy-to-make entry point for both lens producers and camera makers.
The floodgates opened.
From the mid-1960s onwards, almost serious every camera maker on the planet released a SLR that took the M42 mount. Some, like Pentax’s Spotmatic family, became household names. One – the Soviet Union’s Zenit-E – became the most-produced film SLR of all time. Many of Japan’s camera makers – Chinon, Cosina, Mamiya, Yashica and even Olympus – joined the throng. In East Germany, a long, long, loooonnnnggg line of Praktica models offered an inexpensive route into film photography from the 1960s almost until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I discovered the M42 mount nearly 25 years ago, when I started properly learning photography. I put my autofocus Canon EOS 50E aside in favour of a Praktica MTL 5B, one of a slew of models to emerge from the Pentacon factory in the 1980s. The Praktica was robust, rudimentary and uttered a ear-splitting KLACK every time the shutter was fired.
Over the years I built up a collection of M42 lenses and cameras. The more I added, the more I released it was just the tip of the iceberg.
From the 1950s until the early 2000s (yes, really), more than 200 M42 cameras made it into production; that number is likely hundreds more if you add in rebadged models for distributors and photographic chains. Dozens more made it into only limited production. From Alpas to Zenits, the M42 range spanned several decades, varying levels of sophistication, and all sorts of price points.
Some of these cameras are well known; others are almost unheard of. Kosmo Foto’s new series – which will continue across the weeks and months – is an attempt to list as many of them as possible. (We’ll also link out to other blogs and sites with reviews and profiles too.)
The enormous range of M42 lenses includes more than a handful of classics like the Takumar 50/1.4 and the East German Flektogon wide-angle lenses. Their cachet has only grown in the digital age, as digital photographers and videographers adapt them to their need. Many perfectly usable M42 bodies have been discarded in the process, making them even easier to get hold of.
You can see the list of cameras as we publish the series. Similar cameras will be grouped together into series pages where we’ll profile a number of cameras at the same time. As the series progresses, Kosmo Foto will also publish accompanying features on M42 cameras.
We’d also love to feature your reviews or stories about using M42 cameras, so please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com if you have any ideas.
Thanks for reading!
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
My first 35mm SLR was a Mamiya DSX1000 gifted to me by a relative. That took M42 Lenses and had a spot meter! The bug bit. Sadly, I sold it to fund a second hand battery dependant Canon A1. But I have fond memories of my first interchangeable lens camera.
In the USA market, Pentax’s Spotmatics sold in vast numbers during the 1960s and 1970s. They are still available at reasonable price, and thread mount Takumar lenses are top grade. Many work perfectly well. One big weak point: battery leakage when a user did not remove the battery before storing or ignoring his Spotmatic.