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HAGEE cameras were made by Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co, in Dresden, which was the largest independent camera maker in Germany and was founded in 1912 by Johan Steenbergen, a young man from Holland. The word Ihagee, by the way, comes from the German pronunciation of IHG (EE, HA, GEE) as the registered name of the company was Industrie und Handels Gessellschaft, or Industry and Trading Company.
Exakta
THE two Exaktas I have were both used professionally by my late wife Valerie. Indeed, the Kine Exakta that she bought about 1956 was her first 35mm professional camera. Before writing this I checked her negative files and found that in five

Valerie's pre-war Kine Exakta

years she put almost 500 films through it before she bought the Varex IIB. This had nearly 750 films through it before she changed to Canons. That’s pretty hard professional use, and during that time neither camera gave the slightest trouble – except for the first week with the Varex when it started overlapping its frames, and that was soon put right under warranty. They still both work perfectly today.
     In the 1950s, import restrictions were easing but new top quality cameras were still in short supply. This meant that if you wanted a precision 35mm camera you usually had to buy it secondhand. Many of the top dealers had them rebuilt, and they were almost like new. Valerie went out fully intending to buy either a Leica or a Contax, but when she tried the Kine Exakta in Westminster Photographic Exchange she fell in love with it and changed her mind.
     Ihagee already had a 127 size SLR, and the 35mm version, the Kine Exakta was introduced in 1936. It was the world’s first 35mm single lens reflex. There have been some claims that the Russian Sport preceded it by a few months, but this has now been disproved. Valerie’s Kine Exakta is a 1937 or early 1938 model and is as near as makes little difference identical to the original model except that it has a rectangular magnifier on the finder hood in place of the original round one.
     The lens is a 58mm f/2 Biotar with manual stops. It was originally uncoated but was coated post-war as were many good quality lenses. Despite this coating, it’s still a little low on contrast compared with later lenses, but the definition can hardly be faulted. Ihagee used a bayonet with a lever lock for interchangeable lenses. This is very firm and positive.
     The range of shutter speeds on the Exakta is unique for a mechanical shutter, running from 1sec to 12sec, and from the word go it incorporated delayed action. Also unique, I believe, is that the controls for wind-on and shutter firing are left-handed. The wind on was always by a single-stroke lever with a very long stroke, almost 300 degrees, which means that you start winding with your thumb and finish off with your first finger. This takes a little getting used to but in time it becomes

Varex IIB with Pancolor lens

second nature. The release button is on the front of the camera body, and I’ve heard and read all sorts of arguments for and against this. As far as I’m concerned there isn’t a lot to choose between a front position, left hand or right hand, and a top plate position once you get used to either.
     Unlike some other SLRs with waist-level finders, the screen on the Kine Exakta isn’t a glass or plastic screen with a lens over the top; it’s a huge chunk of optical glass cut from a plano-convex lens and with the bottom surface frosted to give an image. It’s very clear and bright even though the silvering on the mirror has suffered slightly over the years.Valerie bought the Varex IIB because she wanted a pentaprism and the finder on the Kine Exakta isn’t interchangeable. The prism on the Varex is interchangeable, and you can get different screens to suit your preference. You can also get a metered prism to give you TTL metering, but these are becoming harder to find.
     With the Varex Valerie got an f/2 Pancolar lens. This is equal to the Biotar in definition, and has a contrast so biting it snaps at you. The Pancolar has automatic stop-down. Ihagee designed the stop-down to be on the lens as an extension of the shutter release button rather than put it in the camera. This means that should the auto stop-down fail you can fit another lens and carry on working.
     In use, there’s very little to choose between the Kine and Varex except for the convenience of the pentaprism. The control knobs on the Varex are more chunky than those on the Kine, and though I prefer the ones on the Kine it’s just a matter of personal preference.

IHAGEE probably produced the Exa as a baby brother to the Exakta so that Exakta users could have a second camera on which they could use their lenses for colour. If that sounds a bit back to front today, putting black and white before colour, you have to remember that at the time colour print film was nothing like as good as it is today.

Chunky and compact but surprisingly heavy

If people took colour they took colour transparencies, the 'serious' amateur still regarded black and white as the main medium to use but often wanted a second camera for family colour transparencies. The semi-snaposhotter with only one camera brought it out at Christmas, parties and holidays, and then bored their friends and relatives silly with hours of projected slides with comentary in a darkened room - an effective conversation stopper.
     For either type of photographer the Exa was a good choice, giving a compactbut surprisingly heavy inexpensive SLR with the advantage of interchangeable lenses, though unlike the Varex, the pentaprism was fixed so you couldn't change screens and the range of shutter speeds was much more restricted. It started out in the 1950s as a simple camera with a fixed pentaprism and a somewhat peculiar metal shutter, but over the years was developed, borrowing technology from the Exkata, until it became a quite desirable camera in its own right, not just as a second camera to its big brother.
     The model I have is the Exa IIa with a vertically travelling cloth shutter and lever wind. It's got a nice clear viewfinder with a split image circle but it hasn't got an instant return mirror. The shutter speeds run from a useful 1/2 sec up to 1/250 sec/ An instant return mirror came with the IIb, and with the last Exa the top speed went up to 1/500sec. Normal lenses were either the Meritar, or the much better Domiplan, but most dealers would fit a Tessar at exctra cost.

IN THE 1930s Ihagee produced a range of folding 6x9 cm cameras with the name Ultrix, sometimes known as the Simplex or Auto. They all followed a similar design, self erecting with the lens panel held by a very rigid arrangement of struts. Not quite as good as the Ikonta arrangement, but unles the camera's been dropped you very seldom find one with the lens panel out

Ihagee folders from the 1930s can be found very  cheaply these days, usually in good condition.

of alignment, even after 70 or so years. A variety of lenses and shutters were fitted, the shutters usually from Gauthier and the lenses labelled Ihagee Anastigmat. I'm pretty sure that Ihagee never made any lenses of their own, they were all bought in, possibly from several makers, though the glasses may have been mounted by Ihagee.
     If you're used to holding an Ikonta or other Zeiss Ikon 6x9 folder the Ihagee folders seem very light, but the build quality is there. Once the Exakta was announced, and particularly the 35mm Exakta, it created such interest that Ihagee developed a vast range of accessories for it, quite a lot of them for the medical and other scientific professions and development of the folders seems to have gone by the board. Certainly there was neither a coupled rangefinder version, nor as far as I know a 'sideways' 6x6 version, the 120 format that pretty well took over from the upright 6x9, and Ihagee folders seem to have died with the war and have been quietly forgotten, even among Exakta collectors. Many photographers, and even some collectors, are familiar with Exaktas, Voigtländes, Zeiss Ikons and so on, but not so many are familiar with Ihagee's other cameras..
     This is a pity, because they came from one of Germany's top makers, at one time the largest completely independent maker in Germany with an output second only to the Zeiss Ikon amalgamation. But it has the advantage that nowadays Ihagee folders can be found, usually in excellent condition, for very low prices, considerably less than the equivalent more popular Voigtländers and Zeiss Ikons. An example is well worth having in any collection.       
     Mine is quite an early 6x9 model made about 1930, usually called the Ultrix but sometimes called the Auto or Simplex. I got it very cheaply from a camera dealer, still in its leather case, and it's in beautiful condition with not a mark on the nickel plated fittings. The self-erecting struts are still as rigid as the day they were made.
     There's the usual tiny reflecting viewfinder mounted on the lens panel, and a frame finder mounted on the side of the body. The lens is a 10.5 cm f/4.5 labelled Ihagee Anastigmat, but I'm not sure who actually made the glass. It's mounted in a Gauthier Ibsor dial set shutter with speeds from 1 sec to 1/125 sec, but it doesn't have to be cocked, it's self-setting. After the shutter fires on the slower speeds you can hear the mechanism give a whirr as it resets itself, which can be a little off-putting till you're used to it. On the back is a small plaque saying that it was supplied by Willy Ebeling at Stern Drogerie, or drugstore, in Rathenow, a suburb of Berlin. What happened to Willy Ebeling I have no idea, but the Stern chain of stores is still going.