4 interactive lens diagrams
Ihagee Exakta SLR mount, 1930s-1960s | 35 mm SLR
Exakta was one of the earliest serious interchangeable-lens 35 mm SLR systems. Its bayonet mount predates many later SLR standards, and the system attracted lenses from Carl Zeiss Jena, Schneider, Meyer-Optik, Steinheil, Angenieux, and other European makers.
Because the mount sits near the beginning of the small-format SLR era, Exakta lenses often show designers adapting rangefinder, cine, and plate-camera formulas to mirror-box constraints. Some lenses feel almost pre-SLR in their optical assumptions, while others point toward the retrofocus wide-angle and telephoto patterns that later systems standardized.
The result is a useful historical bridge: classic Tessar, Biotar, Primoplan, and long-focus designs in a true reflex viewing system. Exakta pages are valuable for seeing how early SLR packaging changed lens proportions before Japanese bayonet systems became dominant.
Flange focal distance 44.7 mm, bayonet mount. 0° at 12 o'clock from the camera front; the lens-side view is the horizontal mirror. Dotted strokes mark photo-scaled or schematic (not-to-scale) dimensions.