Other Exakta Lenses

 

British Lens Makers

In the sections that preceded this page, I neglected to mention the British manufacturers of lenses for the Exakta.

Corfield, Dallmeyer and Cooke produced a number of lenses in various mounts with Dallmeyer producing the greatest number of lenses (going all the way back to the 127 Exaktas). To my knowledge, none of them produced automatic mount lenses.

 

An Ingenious American Lens - Seton Rochwite's Hyponar

When the words "stereo photography" are mentioned in the same context as Exakta, most folks think immediately of the Ihagee Stereflex Units. The Exakta Stereflex units were produced in substantial numbers in two versions.

Not many people think of the USA when it comes to the production of lenses, Kodak, Realist, Revere and several other US makers produced Stereo cameras but even Kodak relied on their German branch to produce a Stereo attachment for their Kodak Retina.

Seton Rochwite of Loveland, Colorado, recently deceased, was the American exception. He not only was the designer of the famous Stereo Realists, the Contura and the Kindar Stereo Camera but he also produced, working from home, one of the rarer lenses for the 35mm Exakta System. His lens, called the Hyponar, was produced in small numbers in the late 1960's. The first group of Hyponars was produced while he was living in San Jose, California. A last group of Hyponars was made in 1978 in Loveland.

The Rochwite Hyponar was a 35mm f4.0 Stereo lens. It produced two images on each frame of film, approximately 18x24mm. It had a unique semi-automatic diaphragm that worked in conjunction with the Exakta mirror. When the camera shutter release button was pressed, the uprising mirror would stop down the Hyponar to the selected f-stop just before the shutter fired. It relied on the use of positive and negative diopters for focusing ranges as the lens did not have a focusing mount.

Here are several more photos of my Hyponar.

Included with the lens was a viewfinder mask that was put in place under the Exakta prism or hood to show one of the two images that would appear on the film. It is shown to the left installed in a Varex IIa, Ver. 3.2 body.

 

I recently was able to obtain a xerox copy of an instruction sheet for adjusting the Hyponar, signed and dated by Seton Rochwite in 1969.

 

The Hyponar was manufactured exclusively by Seton Rochwite while the Kindar was produced by the Kindar Corporation based on his designs. The Kindar used Steinheil Cassar f3.5 optics whereas most Hyponars used f4.0 lenses. Kindars are less rare that Hyponars but still quite uncommon.

© The material on this web site is copyrighted! You may download items of interest for personal use only. If you have a web page, you may hyperlink to my items.