The Praktica LB2

Low Budget, even for a Praktica

The Praktica line of 35mm SLR cameras was manufactured by  Kamera-Werkstatten (K-W), which became part of the VEB Pentacon group in 1964 and were produced to about 1990. Yes, they were made on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in Dresden, East Germany.  My first brush with a Praktica was around 2001, when I  bought a Praktica TL on eBay.  I had it for a few years, and enjoyed its simplicity and the fact that it used M-42 screw-mount lenses.    My next Praktica, in 2009,  was an early model, the FX-3, which was made in the late 1950s.

By the mid-1970s, SLRs were extremely popular, and with the offerings of Pentax, Canon, Minolta, Nikon, and Olympus (and many smaller brands), there was much to choose from in an SLR system.  One thing all these cameras had in common was TTL metering.  The Praktica LTL (1970-75) did have TTL stop-down metering, and I find it interesting that the LB (1972-75) and LB2 (1976-77) utilized an external Selenium meter that was uncoupled.   The price point for the LBs must have been significantly lower, and perhaps aimed at beginners.  I just don't see how such a camera would have competed against Japanese-made SLRs at the time outside of the Communist Bloc.    I tried searching for 1970s Praktica SLR prices in US magazines, and the closest I could come was a 1981 price for a Praktica LTL3 (which did have TTL metering) with a 50mm lens for $107 at Cambridge Camera.   At that time, a Nikon FE body with a 50mm 1.8 lens was $310.  A Canon AE-1 with 50mm lens was $370.  Obviously, the Praktica was much cheaper, but also lacked any automation.

So, what's one to make of the Praktica LB2?  The basic features of the camera are:

• Vertical metal-bladed shutter with B, 1- 1/1000 sec shutter speeds
• ISO 6 - 1600 settings for meter
• external Selenium-celled, uncouple meter with match needle window on top deck
• ISO flash shoe on prism
• 1/125 sec flash sync
• 1/30 sec sync for flashbulb
• front mounted shutter release
• tripod socket
• accepts M-42 screw mount lenses

I loaded up the LB2 with some Svema FN64 (from the FPP store) and took the camera along on several outings.  The front-mounted shutter release didn't take long to get used to, as it's actually very comfortably placed, and my index finger falls naturally on it.    The shutter has a nice chunk sound when it fires, and apart from the Selenium meter, it reminds me a bit of a Minolta SRT 102.  I used several lenses, the favorite being the Starblitz 28mm f/2.8.    I tried to use the metering of the camera as much as I could, though I may have just used sunny-16 a few times.  One disadvantage of that non-TTL meter is that filter factors need to be considered when using any filter, rather than having the meter compensate for them.

In the end, while the LB2 is an odd-duck SLR, it does pretty well for such a low-budget camera.  In general, the Praktica SLRs are a step up from the Russian-made Zenits, and will deliver good results.  The prices on eBay have really gone up for the Prakticas.  In their heyday, they were never common cameras in the US, and some were rebranded by Hanimex and others for the UK market and elsewhere outside the Iron Curtain.  It was only after the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany that the Dresden-made SLRs really became commonly available, and by then, M-42 mount SLRs (of which there are many brands from Japan, Germany, and the Ukraine and Russia) just were not popular, so they did not sell for much in the used market.  Now that film cameras have become more popular, the prices are 2-5 times what I would have paid 10 years ago. You certainly can buy a 1970s-80s Praktica SLR and a bunch of M-42 mount lenses and have a lot of fun shooting.  The vertical metal-bladed shutters are reliable, in my opinion, better than the cloth-based horizontal shutters that are found in the Pentax Spotmatics.

Photo Results

I developed the Svema FN64 in the FPP D-96 for 8.5 min at 20°C.