Exakta Lenses
5 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.
Mount interface
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.