Talk to me about a praktica IV

[AJQS]

Well for ages a lad at work has been saying he's going to bring his uncle's old SLR in with a view to selling me and he's finally brought it in. It's a Praktica IV fitted with a Zeiss Jena 58mm F2 Biotar lens. It was firing but now seems to have jammed, the lens has a problem with the aperture as well as it has no stops, and won't stop down past F8.

What can you tell me about it? Worth anything? Prices seem to vary a lot on ebay! If the lens is repairable would be interesting to use on a Pentax body,.

I haven't actually got a clue how to use it!

 

[Carl V]

To be perfectly honest with you, I don't really know anything about this particular Praktica, but there is some information and instructions on these two websites:

http://www.praktica-collector.de/139_Praktica_IV.htm
http://www.praktica-users.com/cams/fourfive/prakticafourmanual.html

 

[j37r]

Alan here is a link to the user's manual for it

http://www.praktica-users.com/cams/fourfive/prakticafour.html

Try asking on the Praktica Users Group Worldwide or P.U.G.W on Yahoo, there is a great deal of knowledge on Praktica there.


John

 

[AJQS]

Thanks for that.

Well I've played with it a bit more, the body is pretty much goosed (although the shutter seems to be firing again). I do however think the lens maybe worth saving. I'm led to believe it's a semi auto aperture - how does that work exactly? At the moment it's sort of set to F8, it won't go smaller than that but will go to wide open but not stay there??

Am I right in thinking this is the lens that spawned the Helios 44-2?

 

[Morinaka]

Yeah pretty much all soviet glass is based off old Zeiss designs, though the Zeiss stuff is probably better made. Praktica bodies are next to worthless even the older ones like the IV, if it's broken or on the way out it's as good as junk unless you want an ornament.

I have a Helios-44M 58mm f/2 in front of me, it has a semi-auto aperture, don't know if the Zeiss is the same but it should have a A/M switch on it somewhere that should let you switch between manual and semi-auto modes. In M mode the aperture ring works like you'd expect, it opens and closes the aperture ring directly. In Auto mode you set the aperture you want to use but the lens stays open at the widest aperture while you focus so the screen is nice and bright, then when you take the picture it stops the lens down to the aperture you wanted before firing the shutter, pretty much like all modern (D)SLR do as well.

Most bodies that support A mode usually have a depth of field preview lever/button on the body somewhere so you can check the DoF even in A mode, on some it's even a half press of the shutter to do it. If you look on the back of the lens itself you'll see a small pin sticking out, if you push this is in while in A mode you'll see the aperture stop down to what you set it to, that's basically what the camera body does before taking a picture, you should see piece of metal moving just behind the lens mount that does this.

The Zeiss lens is usually over priced on eBay due to its name and DSLR shooters buying every M42 Zeiss lens in existence, so offer him what you'll think he'll take for it, tell himit's broken and offer a tenner or 20 quid if you want.