C41
Kodak Portra 400
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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The KW Praktiflex FX-2 is a 35mm single-lens reflex camera produced by Kamera-Werkstätten (KW) in Dresden, East Germany, introduced around 1957. It is an incremental refinement of the Praktica FX, the model that itself had succeeded the earlier Praktiflex line in the early 1950s. The designation "FX-2" is used by collectors and historians to distinguish this variant from the original FX; KW's own factory nomenclature during this period was not always clearly delineated in markings, and some bodies are found with FX designations that display FX-2 era improvements.
Reference
Recommended film stocks for the 35mm format your camera takes.
C41
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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Kodak Tri-X 400 is a classic black-and-white film known for strong tonality, visible grain, and documentary character.
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Kodak Gold 200 is a daylight-balanced C-41 color negative film with warm color, moderate grain, and a classic consumer-film look.
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About this camera
The refined waist-level M42 SLR of 1957 -- the FX-2 polished the FX formula before the pentaprism era arrived.
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Format | 35mm (24x36 mm) |
| Mount | M42 (42x1mm screw thread) |
| Introduced | ~1957 |
| Shutter | Horizontal cloth focal-plane: 1s - 1/500s + B |
| Flash sync | ~1/25s (PC socket) |
| Meter | None |
| Exposure | Manual |
| Viewfinder | Waist-level ground glass |
| Focus | Manual, ground glass |
| Battery | None required |
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.
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.
The Praktiflex FX-2 accepts all M42 lenses. Lenses available from Dresden-area manufacturers at the time of introduction:
The waist-level finder requires the photographer to compose on a laterally reversed image, which requires adaptation but allows very stable low-angle shooting.
BW
Ilford HP5 Plus is a flexible ISO 400 black-and-white film with classic grain and strong push-processing tolerance.
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Kodak Ektar 100 is a fine-grain C-41 color negative film with saturated color and high sharpness.
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