But the critical situation I mentioned above was not yet solved. There was a lack of new products especially aiming to the mid-range of the amateur camera market. Only at the upper range Dresden did have its single lens reflex cameras with the Praktica and the Exakta selling very well abroad. But bear in mind that both these cameras were pre-war constructions and their potential for enhancements was quite narrowed. Kamera-Werke Niedersedlitz under the lead engineer Siegfried Böhm had developed a new type of a single lens reflex system camera with a modern shutter control and a fully automatic aperture mechanism. But obviously this PRAKTINA IIA was not very efficient to produce so it turned out to be a very expensive camera (around 1000,- Mark, depending on the standard-lens and the viewfinder it was equipped with). Even after the extensive price-cutting from March 1960 it remained unattainable for most of the customers in East Germany. And obviously this Praktina IIA did not have enough reputation on the international market to sell well and take over the role of the declining Exakta Varex. As a result KKW obviously produced this Praktina in form of a stockpile. Although Zeiss Jena just had presented a complete range of new fully automatic lenses at the Leipzig Spring Fairs 1959 and 1960, KKW suddenly ceased production of the Praktina IIA in May 1960.

The first step in this process was a patent from May 1961 applied on a metal leaf focal plane shutter [No. DD27,434]. This lets us conclude that this entirely new camera was conceived around the shutter as the "heart of a camera". The prototype of this new focal plane shutter worked with only two metal leaves resulting in quite a large dimension of the whole shutter unit. Later that year the upper/lower leaf was replaced by a piece of rubberized cloth making the whole moving parts much lighter [Patent No. DE1,145,474]. The cloth material was just bent or stretched when the metal part moved. This still required quite a lot of space but on the other hand lead to very light shutter curtains so that this shutter construction reached a shortest shutter time of 500 µs and a shortest open-time of 8 ms. This unique shutter design of the Praktina-N/Pentacon Super turned out to be astonishingly quiet (when mounted into the camera) and very robust.

The second feature of this camera was the TTL metering at open aperture. The way how a certain amount of light was extracted from the viewfinder image was generally the same already used in the PRAKTICAmat. Both cameras were seemingly developded in parallel now. The working principle of this TTL meter was conceived by Horst Strehle [patented on 30th of May 1964 as DD41,373; 5th of June 1964 DE1,215,506]. It worked with two wedges of glass beneath the viewfinder prism which reflected a small part of the light onto a large surface light dependent resistor. 

 Although in the actual Pentacon Super the transmission of the time value was realized in a different way (with a chain instead of the shown levers) the general principle remained the same. The basic claim of this patent was that this open aperture metering could be realized with an M42 thread mount, which is incapable of delivering an exact 12 o’clock position of the lens. At first sight (and from the today’s point of view) this adherence to the M42 mount might seem as a disadvantage. But in 1964 this mount was one of the two most widespread standards. Remember that the Topcon RE super, which had a TTL metering at open aperture as well, was conceived around the other widespread standard of that era: The Exakta mount.

On the right side you can see the metering instrument (with the red and blue cable) and the cam plate which rotates the instrument according to the time and aperture values used. The camera only contains the metering instrument and the summation gear. The current for the instrument which directly corresponds to the luminance of the viewfinder image (TTL-metering) is provided by the prism finder which contains the light dependent resistor and the battery (below). The battery has to be a mercuric oxide zinc cell, because the whole "metering-electronics" just consists of the battery in series with the LDR and the amperemeter. Therefore the highly stable reference voltage of the mercury cell is indispensable for correct metering. Although very simply designed the TTL meter of the Pentacon Super works extremely precisely over a very wide range of motive-illuminances.

The remaining parts of the camera are mechanically very well built. The chassis is made of one rigid piece of die-cast aluminium. Everything is on a much higher quality-level than the coeval Praktica nova and Praktica Super TL models. But once again: the fact that the Pentacon Super went into production with an open aperture simulation on a mechanical basis while at the same time the Praktica LLC was designed featuring an electric transmission of the aperture value shows us how much this project of a professional camera was already delayed.

The Pentacon Super was designed as a camera with an electrical motor drive. But motors just make sense when the camera can be triggered by electrical means as well. If you look at the picture at the top of this page showing the motorized Praktina, you'll see an arm pushing the usual trigger knob of the camera. This arm had to be adjusted carefully and needed quite a large magnet to get enough force. When the Pentacon Super was conceived, the responsible constructor Horst Strehle (together with Manfred Wießner) invented a simple mechanism to offer a second trigger on the bottom of the camera that was directly connected to the motor drive and needed a much smaller electromagnet. This invention was patented on the 25th of March 1963 in the West German patent No. 1,218,284.

The large shutter and the mechanical solution of the TTL-meter led to a very bulky camera. This can be clearly seen in the picture below by the direct comparison with a compactly built Pentax ME. Such a chunky appearance may have been acceptable for a professional camera, but for the amateur Praktica L-series Pentacon had to develop a more compact shutter with three leaves per curtain to get an overall smaller camera.

The overall construction design of the Pentacon Super was very modern for its era. The camera was based on separated components that could be pre-produced and pre-adjusted before finally being assembled into the chassis. The main components are the shutter and mirror mechanism, the film transport gear, two escapements for the "short" shutter times and the long times/self timer and finally the metering system. All could be mounted into the chassis quite easily and fixed with just a few screws. This was a quite cost saving method and Pentacon learned much from while developing a high-scale production technology for the upcoming Praktica L-series.

Considering the fact that the first patents date back to 1961 (shutter) and 1962 (TTL meter) it took much too long until the finished camera entered the market. Although first shown at Leipzig Autumn Fair 1966 [cf. Die Fotografie, 9/1966, p. 325/326] the Pentacon Super did not enter production until 1968. By that time professional photographers had long switched over to Japanese professional cameras like the Nikon F. While the TTL-metering system of the Nikon F was complemented merely subsequently with an external coupling between the aperture ring of the lens and the metering prism, the modern internal coupling of the Pentacon Super and the automatic transmission of the maximum aperture opening was the easier to handle solution. Nikon did not switch over to an automatic indexing until 1977! But professionals had already taken their decision on the preferred camera system. Therefore the Pentacon Super turned out to be a commercial failure. In this respect the Pentacon Super was comparable to the West German Contarex Super: they both were elaborate and ingenious, but not successful.