Carl Zeiss Jena's Exakta wide-angle — the retrofocus Flektogon 35mm f/2.8 with short close focus.
The Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35mm f/2.8 is a wide-angle prime built in Jena for the Exakta bayonet, one of the earliest retrofocus designs to reach amateur photographers in the East German era. It sat as the standard wide option in the Exakta system, offered alongside the Pancolar standard lens and the longer Sonnar and Triotar teles. Production of the Exakta-fit Flektogon began around 1950 and the design was revised repeatedly across the decades that followed.
This is a manual-focus Exakta-mount lens with a 35mm focal length and a maximum aperture of f/2.8. It uses a retrofocus optical layout that clears the reflex mirror while keeping the wide angle of view. The aperture is set by hand on the lens barrel and, on Exakta bodies, coupled through the internal release lever that many CZJ lenses of the period carried. Further construction figures are omitted here where they cannot be confirmed for this specific early variant.
The Flektogon 35mm is known among users for close focusing that is unusually short for a wide-angle of its day, which lets it double as a semi-macro tool for flowers and small objects. Rendering is crisp across the middle of the frame with a gentle fall-off toward the corners wide open that tightens as it is stopped down. It suits landscape, street and architectural work where the moderate wide field and short focus distance are both useful.
On the used market the Exakta Flektogon turns up less often than the later M42 versions, so condition varies widely. Check the front and rear glass for haze and fungus, which are common in lenses of this age, and confirm the aperture blades are dry rather than oily. Test the aperture ring for smooth clicks and inspect coatings for cleaning marks. Adapting to mirrorless is straightforward with an Exakta adapter, though the Exakta release mechanism differs from screw mounts.