The
Braun Paxette Cameras were a series of 35mm film viewfinder and
rangefinder cameras made by the Braun company in Nürnberg, Germany.
The series started in 1951. The cameras were of high quality, with
excellent optics, bought from reknown German lens makers. The most
interesting models of the series had interchangeable lenses, all had
Prontor leaf shutters.
The Paxette lenses have a M39 screw
mount, similar to the Leica M39 screw mount (or Leica Thread Mount,
LTM), but the flange focal distance is different, a leaf shutter needs
more space than a focal plane shutter. The Leica FFD is 28.8 mm, the
Paxette FFD is a bit less than 44 mm. There was an adapter of a bit
more than 14mm to adapt ordinary M39 lenses to the Paxette. But the
Paxette lenses can not be used on ordinary M39 cameras. Unfortunately
the Paxette lenses can also not be used on M42 screw mount cameras, which is
45.46 mm FFD. If you want more information how to adapt Paxette lenses
to modern cameras, have a look at this page, the link opens in a new window.
I
bought the Paxette cameras for their lenses. I wanted the lenses for my
project to use old lenses on a Sony A7 camera. So you can find a test
of my lenses on my comparison page (the link opens in a new window). I sold the lot recently and decided to share some pictures on these short pages:
