Contax E / Pentacon E

Zeiss Ikon Dresden · M42 mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film (Wolfen museum) · 1956

our own finding

Also known as: Contax E · Zeiss Ikon Contax E · Zeiss Ikon VEB Contax E · VEB Contax E · Contax E Zeiss Ikon · Contax E Kamera · Contax E Spiegelreflexkamera · Contax E Spiegelreflex · Contax E SLR · Contax E M42 · Contax E Tessar · Contax E Biotar · Contax E Belichtungsmesser · Contax E mit · seltene Contax E · Pentacon E · Zeiss Ikon Pentacon E · Pentacon E Kamera · コンタックス E · ペンタコン E

Variants & identification

Variant	Mount	Years	Serial ranges	Production
Contax E (home market)	M42	1956–1956	—	3,360 from April to August 1956 for the Contax E and the Pentacon E together: Richard Hummel's figure, as relayed by praktica-collector.de. Marco Kröger warns that none of Hummel's figures should be trusted, and neither source cites a factory record.
Pentacon E (export)	M42	1956–1956	—	Counted by Hummel within the 3,360 of the E series (praktica-collector.de); no separate figure

In Hummel's model list, as relayed by praktica-collector.de, the Contax E is 097, shown there in a large-knob and a small-knob version under the same number, and the Pentacon E is 098; 099, 'Pentacon 3rd variation', follows without description. The same pages give Alexander Schulz's version numbers as 21 for the small-knob Contax E, 24 with a query mark for the large-knob one and 25 for the Pentacon E, and Kadlubek's catalogue numbers as ZIK 5130 and ZIK 5270.
No Contax E or Pentacon E was offered on Kleinanzeigen on 30 October 2026; under either name the site showed mostly Contax G and Contax/Yashica lenses, Pentacon lenses and Sony E-mount adapters, and a Pentacon ZI in a mixed lot.
A Catawiki listing carried on the Norwegian site finn.no asked 1,722 kroner for a 'Zeiss Ikon VEB Contax E (1956)' with a Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 2.8/50 (listing inactive, last changed 24 May 2025); the seller described the meter as responding and the shutter as working, with the speeds unchecked. Its '3,360 made' repeats Hummel's figure and is not an independent count.
praktica-collector.de records what its owner paid for the bodies shown: 140 € for 95920 with the Flektogon, 130 € for 97374 with a Tessar and 650 € for the Pentacon E 99381 with a Tessar, all before April 2010, the pages' last revision.
Lenses on these bodies cannot be assumed original. Kröger's price list sold the E with the Tessar 2.8/50; the recorded bodies carry Tessars and a Flektogon, and a photograph of an E on Kröger's Contax page shows a Biotar 2/58 T no. 3404215.

How to tell them apart (expand)

A meter housing on top of the prism, with the model name on its hinged front flap: 'Contax E' on one line or 'Pentacon' over 'E' (Wolfen museum; praktica-collector.de's photographs). 'Contax' over 'FB' on the same flap is the Contax FB, which is built on the F (praktica-collector.de)
No diaphragm pusher in the lens mount: praktica-collector.de lists the E 'without internal semiautomatic diaphragm release'; a metered body with a pusher is an FB or FBM (camera-wiki)
Otherwise a Contax D: knob wind, a coaxial flash socket on the top cover, a self-timer lever below the sloping release, and a release that cannot be locked (praktica-collector.de; Wolfen museum)
Taller than a D: 96mm high in the Wolfen museum's record of its E, against 83mm for its Contax D, a figure that record labels a width but that can only be the height
Two numbers: a Kameranummer in the line's running sequence, recorded between 94727 and 101017, and a seven-digit Fabrikationsnummer beginning 50 (Kröger; Wolfen museum)

Contax E (home market):

'Contax E' engraved on one line across the hinged flap at the front of the meter housing on top of the prism (Wolfen museum; photographs on zeissikonveb.de and praktica-collector.de). Below the meter the prism front is covered in leatherette and carries no name or logo
Small or large advance and rewind knobs: small on 94727 (zeissikonveb.de) and 97374 (praktica-collector.de), large on 95920 (praktica-collector.de) and 101017 (zeissikonveb.de)
An Ernemann tower embossed in the leatherette at the lower right of the front, clear in zeissikonveb.de's photographs of 94727 and 101017 and faint in praktica-collector.de's of 97374; the Pentacon E has it too

Pentacon E (export):

'Pentacon' over 'E', on two lines, engraved on the meter flap; otherwise the Contax E (praktica-collector.de's photographs of no. 99381)

Contax E (home market): The camera VEB Zeiss Ikon sold at home. Recorded bodies: 94727, Fabrikationsnummer 5018651, and 101017, Fabrikationsnummer 5031497, which the model overview on zeissikonveb.de, signed by Yves Strobelt and Marco Kröger, calls the first camera in the author's collection; 95920 with a Flektogon 2.8/35 no. 4587130 and 97374 with a Tessar 2.8/50 no. 4719997, both in the collection shown on praktica-collector.de; and a body with Fabrikationsnummer 5018069 at the Industrie- und Filmmuseum Wolfen, with a Tessar 2.8/50 T no. 3743207, which weighs 815g with that lens. The knob sizes do not follow the numbers (small on 94727, large on 95920, small on 97374, large on 101017), so on this evidence neither size marks an early or a late body.
Pentacon E (export): The export version. praktica-collector.de's no. 99381 has the large knobs and came with a Tessar 2.8/50 no. 4770129. A second Pentacon E, shown without its number in the model overview on zeissikonveb.de, also has the large knobs and the Ernemann tower embossed in the leatherette, and carries a Tessar 2.8/50 T no. 4311211. praktica-collector.de's overview of the line, numbered after Hummel's model list, says that from the E onward every model was made as a Contax for East Germany and as a Pentacon for export; camera-wiki also records the name. Kadlubek's catalogue gives the Pentacon E its own number, ZIK 5270, against ZIK 5130 for the Contax E (as listed on praktica-collector.de).

Serial-range notes

94727–101017: Kameranummern of the recorded E bodies: 94727 and 101017 (zeissikonveb.de), 95920 and 97374 (praktica-collector.de) and the Pentacon E 99381 (praktica-collector.de). The Kameranummer runs through the whole line from the Contax S onward (Kröger). These numbers follow the highest D-type number in the zeissikonveb.de and praktica-collector.de collections, Pentacon 93049 (zeissikonveb.de), leaving aside praktica-collector.de's Contax D cutaway no. 135396, and come just before the lowest F-series numbers there, Contax FB 102709 (praktica-collector.de) and Pentacon F 105291 (zeissikonveb.de), leaving aside the Pentacon F 5716, which praktica-collector.de tentatively reads as a small D with a Pentacon F front panel.
Fabrikationsnummern 5018069–5031497: The E's factory numbers fall in the seven-digit series beginning 50, which Kröger and Yves Strobelt identify as a temporary change in VEB Zeiss Ikon's factory-wide numbering: 5018651 on 94727 and 5031497 on 101017 (zeissikonveb.de), 5018069 on the Wolfen museum's body, and seven-digit numbers beginning 5019 on 95920 and 97374 and 5020 on the Pentacon E 99381, at the foot of the back in praktica-collector.de's photographs. The Pentacon 93049 on zeissikonveb.de has 5009477. Kröger places the Fabrikationsnummer on the back of the Contax; the Wolfen museum records its number 'am Boden', on the base.
100000: The 100,000th Contax was shown at the Leipzig autumn fair of 1956 as a gift for the most successful German athlete at the Melbourne Olympics, and presented to the sprinter Christa Stubnick on 8 January 1957, who had to hand it back days later to keep her amateur status (Kröger). It was not an E: the newspaper report Kröger reproduces is headed '100 000. Contax-FB für Christa Stubnick'. Neither source says whether it carried Kameranummer 100000; the recorded E numbers lie on either side of that figure (99381, 101017).

Specifications

Format: 24×36mm on 35mm film (Wolfen museum)
Finder: fixed eye-level pentaprism over a plain ground-glass screen; no split image or microprism
Shutter: horizontal-travel rubberised-cloth focal plane, as on the Contax D (praktica-collector.de, which gives both the same shutter; Wolfen museum) · B, 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/20, 1/50, 1/100, 1/200, 1/500, 1/1000 (praktica-collector.de), set in a slow and a fast range (Wolfen museum) · flash sync X, through a coaxial socket on the top cover; no accessory shoe (praktica-collector.de) · self-timer
Film advance: knob, with a loose take-up spool and a frame counter set by hand (praktica-collector.de); the Wolfen museum notes that the frame counter and the film-type reminder differ from those of its predecessor
Meter: Uncoupled selenium meter on top of the pentaprism, reading the scene directly rather than through the lens: the Werralux hand meter developed at the Feingerätewerk Weimar of VEB Carl Zeiss Jena, built into the camera's top cover (Kröger). Film speed is set on the meter (Wolfen museum), whose calculator dial has ASA and DIN windows and an aperture scale from 1.4 to 22 (praktica-collector.de's photographs); the reading is transferred to the shutter dial and the lens by hand.
Designed by: Hennig Walter — responsible designer of the line from the Contax D onward, in Hummel's model data as relayed by praktica-collector.de (spelt Henning there); Kröger, who spells it Hennig, says design responsibility passed to him when the Contax S's problems persisted, and that the reworked shutter of the D was developed under him from 1951
Dimensions: 149 × 96 × 91 (width × height × depth), 815g, for the Wolfen museum's camera (Fabrikationsnummer 5018069) catalogued with its Tessar 2.8/50 T; the museum gives no body-only figures mm
Country: East Germany
Original price: 656 Mark with the Tessar 2.8/50 in East Germany in 1956, and 39.50 Mark for the ever-ready case (Kröger's price list, which does not say whether the figure is from before or after the East German price cut of 4 June 1956). The official price sheet dated 4 June 1956, which Kröger reproduces, lists the Contax D at 586 Mark with the Tessar but no Contax E. No export or US price appears in the sources cited here.
Accessories: Ever-ready case, 39.50 Mark in 1956 (Kröger's price list). A metered body stands taller than a D or an F: retinarescue.com's Pentacon FM came in an original case much taller than the body, which its owner judges was made for a Pentacon E or FBM

praktica-collector.de describes a condenser-type ground-glass screen and a mirror that is not instant-return, as on the Contax D, so the finder stays dark after an exposure until the knob is wound. There is no diaphragm pusher in the mount, so the lens is stopped down by hand before the exposure. camera-wiki's user notes call the finder of every model before the F small.

Figures we worked out rather than found: The five recorded E numbers span 94727 to 101017, 6,291 numbers, nearly twice Hummel's 3,360. Hummel has the Contax D in production until August 1956 and the FB from September 1956, and the 100,000th Contax was an FB, so D and F-series bodies may share this stretch of the sequence; the span neither confirms nor refutes his figure. · 656 Mark with Tessar 2.8/50 in 1956, against 586 Mark for the Contax D with the same lens (from July 1956 in Kröger's price list; already on the official price sheet dated 4 June 1956) and 663 Mark for the Contax F with it in 1957: the meter added about 70 Mark if the E's price dates from after the cut of 4 June 1956, which the list does not say. · The Wolfen museum's E is 96mm high against 83mm for its Contax D (149 and 148mm wide), both catalogued with a lens; the D's record labels its 83mm a width, but it is the only one of its three figures that can be the height. Read that way, the 13mm difference is the meter housing.

Where sources disagree

Year

April to August 1956 — Hummel, as relayed by praktica-collector.de; 1956 — the Wolfen museum, Kröger's price list (656 Mark in 1956), German Wikipedia and davidde.com
1955 — pentaconsix.com ('In 1955, the Contax E was produced')
1953 — butkus.org's Contax index ('Contax E, 1953-??'), with no source given

Better supported: 1956

The recorded body numbers, 94727 to 101017, lie around 100,000, and the 100,000th Contax, a Contax FB, was shown at the Leipzig autumn fair of 1956 (Kröger).

Meter

'Exactly the same kind of metering system' as the Contax III of 1936, without the prism — pentaconsix.com
Technically rather a step back from the 1930s: the Contaflex of 1935 and the Contax III of 1936 had meters integrated into the body that were read by bringing a needle to a fixed mark, where the E carries a hand meter set into its top cover — Kröger

None of these meters is coupled to the shutter or the aperture; the two sources disagree over whether the E matched the prewar Zeiss Ikon meters or fell short of them.

What reviewers say

Marco Kröger, zeissikonveb.de (blog) — An essay on how Dresden camera-making went from pioneer to laggard in electronics and exposure metering. The E was made by building Jena's Werralux hand meter, a clumsy unit, into the top cover of an otherwise neat camera, which he judges technically a step back from the meters Zeiss Ikon had built into the Contaflex and Contax III in the 1930s. Acceptable as a stopgap, he says, but the line never moved beyond it.
camera-wiki.org, 'A user's point of view' (blog) — Written for the whole line: excellent ergonomics, but before the F the finder is small and the lens has to be stopped down by hand, which is easy to forget at first. Curtains that look sound are likely to be full of pinholes, so a cleaned body with replaced curtains is the surest buy; the article's introduction adds that the thin stamped gears wear easily.

History

The Contax E is the Contax D with an exposure meter on top. VEB Zeiss Ikon (VEB for Volkseigener Betrieb, a state-owned enterprise), the Dresden works that had made the Contax S of 1949 and the D of 1952, took the Werralux hand meter developed at the Feingerätewerk Weimar of VEB Carl Zeiss Jena and built it into the camera’s top cover above the prism, where it sits as a squared-off housing with the model name engraved on a hinged flap at its front. The meter uses a selenium cell and is coupled to nothing: film speed is set on the meter’s dial, the reading is taken from the scene rather than through the lens, and the result is set on the shutter dial and the lens by hand. Richard Hummel’s figures, relayed by praktica-collector.de, put production at 3,360 between April and August 1956, export bodies included, though Marco Kröger warns against trusting any of Hummel’s numbers; the Wolfen museum, Kröger’s East German price list and German Wikipedia also give 1956, while pentaconsix.com says 1955 and butkus.org’s index 1953. At home it cost 656 Mark with the Tessar 2.8/50.

Everything below the meter is the D. The shutter is the D’s horizontal rubberised-cloth focal plane, with speeds from 1 second to 1/1000 in a slow and a fast range; the wind is a knob; the mirror stays up after the exposure until the knob is turned; the screen is plain ground glass; the flash socket is on the top cover and the self-timer lever sits below the sloping release, which no longer locks. The Wolfen museum notes a changed frame counter and film-type reminder, and its records make the E about 13mm taller than the D. What the E lacks is what the next camera brought. The Contax F, which Hummel has in production from September 1956, added a pusher in the mount to fire spring-diaphragm lenses, a bigger mirror and larger knobs, and its metered twin, the FB, put the same kind of meter on the F body. So the E is a camera of a few months and, with the D, the last of the line on which the lens must be stopped down by hand before every exposure, as camera-wiki’s user notes warn.

Kröger is unimpressed by it. In his account of how Dresden camera-making lost its early lead in electronics and exposure metering, the Contaflex of 1935 and the Contax III of 1936 had meters integrated into the body and read by setting a needle to a fixed mark, a standard not bettered until the first automatic exposure systems around 1960; the E, by contrast, carries a clumsy hand meter grafted onto the top of a neat camera, technically a step back from what the same works had done twenty years before. He would have accepted it as a stopgap, but the line never got beyond it: the same meter went on to the FB and FBM (camera-wiki) and stayed until production ended, in March 1962 by Hummel’s dates. pentaconsix.com is milder, calling the meter scarcely a new idea, since the Contax III of 1936 had exactly the same kind of metering system.

There are two versions, told apart by the meter flap. The Contax E reads “Contax E” on one line; the export Pentacon E reads “Pentacon” over “E”. praktica-collector.de, which numbers the models after Hummel, says that from the E onward every model was made as a Contax for East Germany and as a Pentacon for export; the name Pentacon, from pentaprism and Contax, had been registered in October 1952 during the dispute with Zeiss Ikon AG in Stuttgart over the old names, and first appeared on export Contax Ds. Neither version has a name or logo on the prism front, which is covered in leatherette below the meter. Both small and large advance and rewind knobs occur, and not in number order: 94727 and 97374 have small knobs, 95920, the Pentacon E 99381 and 101017 large ones. The bodies photographed on zeissikonveb.de, Contax and Pentacon alike, also have the Ernemann tower of the Dresden works embossed in the leatherette at the lower right of the front, a mark praktica-collector.de describes only for the FB. VEB Zeiss Ikon did not keep the line for long after the E: during 1957 it had to hand its whole still-camera business to the smaller VEB Kamerawerke Niedersedlitz (Kröger), and in 1959 the Dresden makers were merged as VEB Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden, renamed Pentacon in 1964.

The E is scarce on the market. No Contax E or Pentacon E was offered on Kleinanzeigen at the end of October 2026, where the name brings up Contax G lenses and Sony adapters, and a Catawiki seller asked 1,722 kroner on the Norwegian site finn.no for one with a Tessar. When one turns up, read the flap: “Contax” over “FB” is the F-based camera with the same meter, and its mount has a diaphragm pusher, which the E’s has not. Check that the meter needle responds to light, which is as far as that seller’s description went. The rest is the D’s checklist: the curtains on every camera of the line gather pinholes even when they look sound and the stamped gears wear, so camera-wiki advises buying a body with replaced curtains. Every body carries two numbers, a Kameranummer counted through the whole line, recorded for the E between 94727 and 101017, and a seven-digit factory number beginning 50. It takes 42mm screw-mount lenses; the price list paired the E with the Tessar 2.8/50, but the recorded bodies carry Tessars, a Flektogon and a Biotar, and a lens is original only where a document says so.

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This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

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