Yesterday I was at home in Ingolstadt visiting my parents. My mother was so nice to borrow me her SLR camera. It is a pretty old Praktica super TL. 
It is a Eastgerman production and even has a fan community. You can find the documentation of that camera here. More info can also be found here.
The camera has a Carl Zeiss Jena, Tessar 2,8/50 lens. It is a very good lens. The design is 100 years old but it was remade many times. Zeiss is producing the lens till today. Even if the lens is pretty dark 2,8f. The positive side of the lens is that it draws very sharp and is very light. It as also called Eagle Eye of your camera. You can read more about it here.
As you can imagine it is not a digital camera so it takes some time till there will be sample images. I took today 18 images and in the next days I should finish the film. Taking that images the camera got stuck three times and messed up three images. That happens when you use old mechanics that are not used often. But nevertheless it is a lot of fun taking images with it. It is loud like hell and heavy. Just like firing some kind of weapon.
I am really asking myself if there is a photoblog somewhere where someone is shooting photos with such an “ancient” technology.
Man, this was the first SLR camera I ever owned.
I bought it second-hand for £20 in about 1976 or 77, at the age of about 18. i kept it until about 1982, when i bought a Pentax ME Super.
It was very basic and simple, but was good for learning how to use an SLR.
the meter was a bit inaccurate, so you had to make sure it read a bit low when you took pictures, but teh lens was OK and the pictures pretty good (as good as the Pentax really). nice to see it hasn’t been totally forgotten.
My father bought a Praktica Super TL in 1971. It had an Oreston f1.8 lens. I probably used it more than he did, especially when I first started taking my first serious BW shots on TriX or HP5. It was a fine camera for it’s time and capable in the right hands. I have fond memories of it, particularly as I did my first real work on it and the fact that I associate it with my late father, the person who got me interested in photography in the first place.
Regards
Byron.