KW Praktiflex FX-21957

History

The FX designation was introduced by KW around 1952 as it transitioned from the Praktiflex naming convention to the Praktica line. "FX" is understood to stand for "Fortschritt" (progress) and marked a series of improvements over the immediate postwar Praktiflex, including a more robust film advance mechanism and improved shutter construction. The FX series was produced in several variants -- sometimes called FX, FX-2, and FX-3 by collectors -- through the mid-to-late 1950s.

The FX-2, introduced around 1957, coincided with a period of significant competitive pressure on Dresden camera manufacturers. The Asahi Pentax of 1957 and the Voigtländer Bessamatic of 1958 were establishing pentaprism eye-level viewing as the expected standard for a serious SLR. KW's continued commitment to the waist-level finder on the FX-2 was both a manufacturing conservatism and a cost decision: the pentaprism viewfinder added cost and complexity, and there remained a market for simpler, cheaper M42 bodies.

By 1959, the Praktica IV with pentaprism was in production, and the waist-level FX-series bodies were being phased out of KW's primary product line. The FX-2 is therefore one of the last expressions of the waist-level KW SLR tradition that stretched back to the 1938 original Praktiflex.

Why It Matters

The Praktiflex FX-2 is the final polished form of the waist-level M42 SLR that originated in 1938. It carries the accumulated mechanical improvements of nearly twenty years of Dresden SLR development in a configuration that was already becoming obsolete when it was produced. This gives it a particular historical interest: it is simultaneously the most refined waist-level M42 camera KW produced and a camera that was already being superseded at the moment of its introduction.

For the M42 mount specifically, the FX series cameras -- including the FX-2 -- are significant as the primary production vehicles through which the M42 standard was maintained and expanded in the early-to-mid 1950s. The volume of M42 lens production from Carl Zeiss Jena and Meyer-Optik Görlitz during the FX era created the ecosystem that would make M42 attractive to Asahi and other Japanese manufacturers.

Lenses & Accessories

The Praktiflex FX-2 accepts all M42 lenses. Lenses available from Dresden-area manufacturers at the time of introduction:

• Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 50/2.8 -- the standard kit lens; the coated version of the Tessar is common on FX-era bodies
• Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 50/3.5 -- earlier and slower, found on very early FX examples
• Meyer-Optik Görlitz Primotar 50/3.5 -- the budget-tier standard; acceptable sharpness stopped down
• Meyer-Optik Görlitz Trioplan 50/2.9 -- a triplet lens known today for its distinctive soap-bubble bokeh rendering
• Carl Zeiss Jena Biotar 58/2 -- fast standard lens of the era, highly collectible; produced through the mid-1950s

The waist-level finder requires the photographer to compose on a laterally reversed image, which requires adaptation but allows very stable low-angle shooting.

Sample Photographers / Notable Use

• Used by East German and Eastern European photographers in the second half of the 1950s, before the pentaprism-equipped Praktica IV became widely available.
• Part of the camera ecosystem that produced a large volume of East German documentary and press photography of the 1950s.
• Collected today as the closing chapter of the waist-level M42 Dresden SLR lineage, alongside the earlier Praktiflex and Praktica FX.

References

• Camera-Wiki: Praktica FX -- covers the FX series production history and variant designations