Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Contax FB / Pentacon FB

Zeiss Ikon Dresden · M42 mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film (Pentacon F manual, whose last chapter covers the FB) · 1956

our own finding

Also known as: Contax FB · Pentacon FB · Zeiss Ikon Contax FB · VEB Carl Zeiss Ikon Contax FB · Ritacon FB · コンタックス FB · ペンタコン FB

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Contax FB M42 1956–1961 — praktica-collector.de gives 21,630 for the Contax FB and the Pentacon FB together, September 1956 to June 1961: Richard Hummel's figure, with no separate count for either name. Marco Kröger warns that Hummel's production figures cannot be trusted, and no factory record has been published.
Pentacon FB M42 1956–1961 — Counted by Hummel within the 21,630 of the FB series (praktica-collector.de); no separate figure
Ritacon FB (American Camera Exchange, 1957) M42 1957–1957 — —
  1. Consol FB (order number 137 000, 'Contax FB 135 000 in USA Bezeichnung') is left out as a variant: the order list says that the Consol F series existed only on paper.
  2. In Hummel's model list on praktica-collector.de the Contax FB is no. 102 and the Pentacon FB no. 103, between the Pentacon F (101) and the Contax FM (104). The same site's numbers for Schulz and Kadlubek are 30 and ZIK 5150 for the Contax FB, 31 and ZIK 5290 for the Pentacon FB. Its owner paid 120 € for 102709 with Biotar and 70 € for 136043 with Tessar, before the pages' last revision in April 2010.
  3. The Praktica IV FB, which Kleinanzeigen sellers also title 'Pentacon - Praktica IV FB', is a different camera from the Praktica line of the Kamera-Werke Niedersedlitz; the listing filter keeps it off this page.
  4. Market, autumn 2026. Kleinanzeigen asking prices for the Pentacon FB: 130 € with lens and brown leather case (Rostock, 8 October), 99 € with Tessar 2.8/50, case and hood, untested (Berlin-Pankow, 21 October), 80 € with Biotar 2/58, the camera not winding but the meter working (Mittenwald, 1 October), and 35 € as defective with Tessar no. 5460013, the slow-speed escapement running at 1 s but the curtain not opening and the mirror staying up (Seelow, 2 September). For the Contax FB: 249 € with Tessar (Berlin, 26 July) and 285 € untested with case and instruction book (Dresden, listed 28 February). On Yahoo! Auctions a CONTAX FB body sold for 10,800 yen on 10 June 2026 and a CONTAX FB with lens, titled with both 'Tessar' and 'DOMIPLAN 50mm F2.8', for 5,775 yen on 26 May 2026.
  5. The Dresden seller of February 2026 describes the camera as a 'VEB Carl Zeiss Jena Contax FB', and titles it 'VEB Carl Zeiss Ikon': a common mix-up of the lens maker in Jena with the camera maker in Dresden.
  6. Lenses on these bodies cannot be assumed original. The recorded FBs carry a Biotar 2/58 (no. 4900699 and the Mittenwald camera) and Tessars 2.8/50 (nos. 4786217, 5234748, 5363644, 5460013). No East German outfit price for the FB with a lens has been found; the Contax F was sold with the Meyer-Optik Primotar E 3.5/50, the Tessar 2.8/50 or the Biotar 2/58.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A squared-off meter housing on top of the prism with the name on its hinged front flap: 'Contax' or 'Pentacon' over 'FB'. 'Contax E' on one line, or 'Pentacon' over 'E', is the Contax E; 'FBM' is the model with split-image focusing
  • Behind the flap, the selenium cell under a ribbed window; on top of the housing, a curved scale window with a red follower pointer and a black needle, and a knurled calculator disc with DIN and ASA film speeds (Pentacon manuals; photographs on praktica-collector.de and Kleinanzeigen)
  • A bar in the lens throat that trips the spring diaphragm of Jena lenses: the Contax F's release, which the metered Contax E lacks (praktica-collector.de lists the FB with automatic diaphragm, the E without)
  • Plain matte screen with a field lens; two wedges in a clear centre mean an FBM (Pentacon F manual)
  • Large wind and rewind knobs, flash nipple on the top cover, self-timer lever on the front below the sloping release, no accessory shoe (Bild und Ton 9/1956; praktica-collector.de)

Contax FB:

  • 'Contax' with a small 'FB' centred beneath it, engraved on the hinged flap at the front of the meter housing on top of the prism (praktica-collector.de's no. 102709; Kleinanzeigen listings of February and July 2026)
  • praktica-collector.de describes a large Ernemann tower stamped into the leatherette at the right front. It is there, low down to the right of the mount, on the Contax FB offered in Berlin in July 2026, but the Contax E 101017 photographed on zeissikonveb.de has the same embossing, so it marks the period rather than the model
  • Factory order number 135 000: 'Contax FB, Spiegelreflex-Kleinbildkamera ohne Optik (mit Springblende, Bildfeldlinse und Belichtungsmesser)', supplied with guarantee, instructions and a spare spool in a carton (Yves Strobelt's order-number list on zeissikonveb.de)

Pentacon FB:

  • 'Pentacon' with a small 'FB' beneath it on the meter flap; otherwise the Contax FB (praktica-collector.de's no. 136043; the illustration of the Pentacon FB in the German Pentacon manual)
  • Factory order number 138 000, listed as 'PENTACON FB (= Contax FB 135 000 in neuer Bezeichnung)', the Contax FB under its new name (Strobelt's order-number list)
  • Its lenses may be named only 'Jena B' (Biotar) or 'Jena T' (Tessar) rather than 'Carl Zeiss Jena': the depth-of-field tables of both the English and the German Pentacon manuals are headed that way

Ritacon FB (American Camera Exchange, 1957):

  • Sold in the United States as the 'New 1957 Ritacon FB'. No surviving body under this name has been recorded here, so whether it carried a plate like the Hexacon's, an engraving like the ConSol's, or only the dealer's advertising name is not known

Serial-range notes

two numbers on every body
VEB Zeiss Ikon gave its cameras a Kameranummer, counted through the whole Spiegel-Contax line from the S onward, and a Fabrikationsnummer, a factory-wide production-lot number shared with other products and found on the back of the Contax (Kröger and Yves Strobelt). Kröger adds that the system was not kept up consistently once VEB Zeiss Ikon began to be wound down, between 1956 and 1958.
about 100000
The 100,000th camera of the line was shown at the Leipzig autumn fair of 1956, the fair at which the FB was announced, as a gift for the most successful German athlete at the Melbourne Olympics; it went to the runner Christa Stubnick on 8 January 1957, and she had to hand it back days later to keep her amateur status (Kröger). The lowest FB number recorded here, 102709, lies just above it.
102709 (Fabrikationsnummer 5031990)
praktica-collector.de's Contax FB 102709 shows a factory number at the foot of the back in that site's small photograph, apparently 5031990. The Contax E 101017 on zeissikonveb.de carries 5031497, and the Contax F 106722 there carries 5084296. Strobelt observed that the factory numbers ran for a time in a seven-digit series beginning 50 before returning to six digits at about 400xxx; by that scheme this FB was made shortly after that Contax E. The Contax FB offered in Berlin in July 2026 carries 411707, from the later six-digit series.
102709–136043
FB-type bodies recorded here: Contax FB 102709 and Pentacon FB 136043 (praktica-collector.de). They share one sequence with the rest of the F series: the F-type bodies listed by Strobelt and Kröger run from Pentacon F 105291 to Contax F 152115, their Pentacon FM bodies from 134794 to 190106, and Kröger shows a Pentacon FBM numbered 188867. Hummel's 21,630 for the FB cannot be read off these numbers.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film (Pentacon F manual, whose last chapter covers the FB) · 36 or 20 from daylight cartridges; the German Pentacon manual also allows bulk film cut to lengths of up to 1.60 m exposures
Finder
fixed eye-level pentaprism with a thin field lens cemented beneath it, over a plain ground-glass screen; no split image, no microprism, no meter reading in the finder
Shutter
horizontal-travel rubberised-cloth focal plane (praktica-collector.de) · B and 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/20 s in red; 1/50, 1/100, 1/200, 1/500, 1/1000 s in black; the range is chosen separately and the matching black or red pointer appears in the speed dial (praktica-collector.de; Pentacon F manual) · flash sync X, through a single-pole contact nipple on the top cover next to the rewind knob; bulb units of no more than 24 V and 2 A, no limit for electronic flash; no accessory shoe (praktica-collector.de; Pentacon F manual) · self-timer
Film advance
knob: one turn winds the shutter, advances the film and lowers the mirror; loose take-up spool; frame counter set by hand (praktica-collector.de; Pentacon F manual)
Back
hinged back, opened by pushing up a bolt on the right-hand side (Pentacon F manual); on the FB the film-reminder disc records only the type of film, because the film speed is set on the meter (German Pentacon manual)
Meter
Uncoupled selenium meter built into the top cover over the prism, reading the scene directly and not through the lens. Kröger identifies the meter of the metered Spiegel-Contax as the Werralux hand meter of the Feingerätewerk Weimar of VEB Carl Zeiss Jena, first built in for the Contax E; camera-wiki describes the FB as a Contax F with an exposure meter like the Contax E's. The Pentacon manuals describe its use: the film speed is set once on a disc marked DIN and ASA; a light press on a pin at the left of the protective flap opens it and uncovers the cell; the red follower pointer in the scale window is brought over the black meter needle by turning the knurled disc, and shutter speeds and apertures can then be read off in pairs, the speeds coloured like those of the shutter dial (1/1000 to 1/50 black, 1/20 to 1 s red, longer times for B black again); the flap is closed again after the reading. The scale on a Contax FB photographed for sale in 2026 runs from f/1.4 to f/22. No battery.
Designed by
Hennig Walter — given design responsibility for the Spiegel-Contax in 1951, leading the redesign that became the Contax D (Kröger); named as responsible designer of the Contax FB on praktica-collector.de (spelt Henning there). Kröger places the F series in a gradual takeover of the Contax design by the Kamera-Werke Niedersedlitz
Country
East Germany
Original price
In East Germany, Kröger's price list gives the Pentacon FB body at 515 Mark in 1959 and 397 Mark in 1960 (the list notes a general price cut on 28 May 1960), against 445 and 337 Mark for the Pentacon F body. No Contax FB price and no outfit price with a lens have been found. In the United States, an advertisement for the 'New 1957' Ritacon FB, reproduced by Kröger, asked $29.50 more than the Ritacon F, which was $79.50 with automatic Tessar or $99.50 with automatic Biotar, each plus the buyer's old Pentacon, Hexacon or ConSol in trade; no plain list price has been found.
Accessories
Every accessory of the Pentacon F except the direct-vision frame finder, according to the FB chapter of the English and German Pentacon manuals; the F list includes copying stand, transparency copying device, close-up bellows, micro attachment, focusing slide, focusing telescope, angle finder, intermediate rings and tubes, a special intermediate ring with double cable release that keeps the automatic diaphragm working, eyecup, lens hood, colour filters, cable release, flashgun, chestpod and ever-ready case

The finder of the Contax F. The 1956 fair report promised a screen bright into the corners from a field lens in the finder path; Kröger says the field lens under the shortened prism raised the brightness at the edges only a little. praktica-collector.de calls the screen a condenser-type ground glass and records no aperture or meter display in the finder: the meter is read on top of the camera, away from the eye. With a spring-diaphragm lens the image is focused at full aperture. The mirror is not instant-return; the finder stays dark after the exposure until the knob is wound.

Figures we worked out rather than found: The meter's price: on Kröger's price list the Pentacon FB body cost 70 Mark more than the Pentacon F body in 1959 (515 against 445) and 60 Mark more in 1960 (397 against 337). · The Ritacon FB at $109.00 with automatic Tessar or $129.00 with automatic Biotar, each plus a trade-in, is this page's addition of the advertisement's $29.50 to its Ritacon F prices. · years for the pentacon-fb variant follow praktica-collector.de's span for the whole FB series; the earliest dated evidence of the Pentacon FB name found is the 1959 price list and manual.

Where sources disagree

Pentacon-fb (use of the name at home)
  • From the Contax E onward every model was made as a Contax for East Germany and as a Pentacon for export — praktica-collector.de (Hummel)
  • In 1958 the name Pentacon was used generally for the former Contax cameras — German Wikipedia
  • Kröger's East German price list has the Pentacon FB body in 1959 and 1960 and no Contax FB, though it still prices a Contax F body in 1957, 1959 and 1960; the German-language Pentacon manual with its Pentacon FB chapter was issued by VEB Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden, print code ending /59

The Pentacon FB was on sale in East Germany by 1959, priced in Mark. The German manual alone does not show home use, since Pentacon was also the export name for West Germany (German Wikipedia). When the Contax FB name stopped is not documented; the Berlin Contax FB of 2026, factory number 411707, shows the Contax name on a body from the later six-digit number series.

Maker
  • VEB Zeiss Ikon Dresden — praktica-collector.de; the Bild und Ton fair report of 1956 lists the FB under VEB Zeiss Ikon, Dresden
  • VEB Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden — imprint of the German Pentacon manual with the FB chapter

Kröger: VEB Zeiss Ikon had to hand its whole still-camera sector to the Kamera-Werke Niedersedlitz during 1957 and was all but dissolved the next year; camera-wiki: the Dresden makers were merged as VEB Kamera- und Kinowerke in 1959, named Pentacon in 1964. Each name fits part of the run.

What reviewers say

History

The Contax FB is the Contax F with an exposure meter. VEB Zeiss Ikon in Dresden had put a selenium meter into the top cover of its reflex Contax in 1956, making the Contax D into the Contax E, in production from April in Hummel’s dates; that autumn it moved the same kind of meter onto the new F body, with its diaphragm release in the lens throat and its field lens under the prism. The two cameras were announced together for the Leipzig autumn fair of 1956. Egon Brauer’s fair report in Bild und Ton puts it simply: the model with the built-in electric exposure meter is called the Contax FB, the other the Contax F. Richard Hummel’s figures, relayed by praktica-collector.de, put production at 21,630 between September 1956 and June 1961, export bodies included; Marco Kröger, whose zeissikonveb.de documents the line, warns against trusting Hummel’s numbers. The 100,000th camera of the line was shown at the same fair, and the lowest FB number recorded, 102709, sits just above it.

Kröger identifies the meter of the metered Spiegel-Contax as the Werralux hand meter of the Feingerätewerk Weimar, part of VEB Carl Zeiss Jena, set into the camera’s top cover above the prism to make the Contax E, and camera-wiki describes the FB as a Contax F with an exposure meter like the E’s. It is coupled to nothing and reads the scene directly. The Pentacon manuals give the method. Set the film speed once on the disc marked DIN and ASA. Press the small pin at the left of the hinged flap, which opens and uncovers the cell. Then turn the knurled disc until the red follower pointer in the scale window covers the black needle, read off a pair of speed and aperture, and set them by hand. The speeds on the disc are coloured like those on the shutter dial, black from 1/1000 to 1/50 and red from 1/20 to 1 s. The flap is closed again afterwards. The meter is calibrated for a subject of average brightness, and the manual adds the advice that follows from it: go close in snow, tilt the camera down to keep the sky out, and against the light, where a close reading is impossible, double the exposure time. Kröger is unimpressed. In his view a clumsy hand meter grafted onto a neat camera was a step back from the meters Zeiss Ikon had built into the Contaflex and Contax III in the 1930s: tolerable as a stopgap, except that the line never went beyond it.

Under the meter the FB is the F, and the German manual says as much: its FB chapter is four pages long and states that the Pentacon F instructions apply to the camera. A bar in the lens throat trips the spring diaphragm of a Carl Zeiss Jena lens as the release is pressed, and the diaphragm has to be cocked again by hand after each exposure; Meyer-Optik Görlitz’s pressure-diaphragm lenses also close automatically, and other lenses are stopped down by hand. The screen is plain ground glass, brightened at the edges by the thin field lens. The cloth focal-plane shutter runs from 1 s to 1/1000 in a red and a black range, the mirror stays up until the knob is wound, the flash nipple is on the top cover and the self-timer is on the front. Every Pentacon F accessory fits except the direct-vision frame finder.

There are two names, read from the flap: “Contax” over “FB”, or “Pentacon” over “FB”. In the factory order list that Yves Strobelt published on zeissikonveb.de, the Contax FB is 135 000 and the Pentacon FB 138 000, “the Contax FB under its new name”. A Consol FB for the United States got an order number but, according to the list, never existed beyond paper. An American dealer, however, did advertise a “New 1957 Ritacon FB” at $29.50 more than the Ritacon F, against the trade-in of an older Pentacon, Hexacon or ConSol. Pentacon, from pentaprism and Contax, had been registered in October 1952 and engraved on export bodies since the Contax D, during the long dispute with Zeiss Ikon AG in Stuttgart over the old trademarks; the same works had also filed the name Pentax in 1952, which Asahi later had to buy from it. Hummel has Contax for the home market and Pentacon for export from the E onward. However, by 1959 the Pentacon FB was on the East German price list at 515 Mark for the body, 70 Mark more than the Pentacon F, and no Contax FB appears there, although the same list still prices a Contax F body in 1959 and 1960. German Wikipedia says Pentacon became the general name in 1958. The German-language Pentacon manual with an FB chapter carries a print code ending /59, but it does not settle the question, since Pentacon was also the name under which the cameras went to West Germany, where the Contax name was not available. The maker changed underneath the camera too. During 1957 VEB Zeiss Ikon had to hand its still cameras to the Kamera-Werke Niedersedlitz, in 1958 it was all but dissolved, and that German manual is signed by VEB Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden, the merged Dresden camera industry formed in 1959 that took the name Pentacon in 1964.

On the German market today the Pentacon FB is the name seen more often: four were offered on Kleinanzeigen in September and October 2026, at 35 to 130 euros, while the two Contax FBs offered that year were asked at 249 and 285 euros. On Yahoo! Auctions in Japan a Contax FB body sold for 10,800 yen in June 2026. To identify one, read the flap. “Contax E” or “Pentacon” over “E” is the earlier camera without the diaphragm bar in the throat, and “FBM” adds a split image in the finder. The Ernemann tower embossed in the leatherette at the lower right of the front, which praktica-collector.de notes on its FB, appears on a Contax E too. Open the flap and point the camera at a light: the needle should move, as it did on a Pentacon FB offered in October 2026 whose shutter would not wind. The rest of the checklist is the line’s. Camera-wiki warns that the curtains of every model in the family deteriorate and are likely to be full of pinholes even when they look sound, so a body with replaced curtains is the safer buy. A finder that stays black after an exposure is only an unwound camera. The FBs recorded carry Biotars and Tessars, but a lens is original only where papers say so. Every body has a camera number counted through the whole line and a factory number on the back; on praktica-collector.de’s Contax FB 102709 that number appears to be 5031990, close to the 5031497 of a Contax E numbered 101017.

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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.

Photographs

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Related: Contax E / Pentacon E · Contax F / Pentacon F · Contax FBM / Pentacon FBM

Lenses for this body: Biotar 58mm f/2 · Tessar 50mm f/2.8 (Jena, 1947 design) · Flektogon 35mm f/2.8 · Biotar 7.5cm f/1.5 · Tessar 5cm f/3.5 · Sonnar 13.5cm f/4 · Triotar 135mm f/4 · Biometar 80mm f/2.8 (35mm SLR, 1948 design) · Sonnar 180mm f/2.8 (Olympia-Sonnar) · Primotar 50mm f/3.5 (Primotar E) · Tessar 40mm f/4.5 (Jena, 1938 design)

Sources (25)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.