The webmaster of this site.

My name is Hugo Ruys. ü ç ø I am a Dutchman, born in 1938. Since about 1975 I have collected all Ihagee products, many Exakta lenses, all Ihagee equipment and most non-Ihagee equipment for Exakta.

More important, I collect information about the history of the Ihagee company (East and West) and its founder/owner Johan Steenbergen, I write articles about it and will make (part of) this available to you on this site.

I try to keep in contact with other collectors by being member of the British Exakta Circle and the French Exakta Ihagee Club de France (EICF), and by maintaining a list of Dutch Ihagee collectors (this list is not a club; most of them are members of the Dutch Society of Photographica Collectors "Fotografica").

I also maintain contact with the family of Steenbergen, in particular with the boards of the Steenbergen Stichting (=foundation) and the Stichting Steenbergen Caerus, and represent the Ihagee Collectors of the World (you) when the Steenbergen Stipendia are handed out to the best Dutch photography student of each year.

In 2016, the host registration and domain name were transferred to Mr. Dikkers, as representative of the Stichting Steenbergen Caerus. This foundation has pledged to maintain the content and keep the site available on the internet in order to allow collectors on-going access to its rich database of historical information about the Ihagee, its founder and Exakta.

Supporters of this site
Several people have supplied information (articles, scans of documents, pictures, reports, data) to publish on this site.
I want to mention at least the following supporters of ihagee.org:
Hein Ehrhardt, then president of the Steenbergen Foundation, author of  "My uncle Steenbergen"
Svend Erik Jeppesen, author of the Danish articles in the Danish Department
Gary Cullen and Klaus Rademaker, allowing me to use the lens data from "Exakta Obscurities"
Frans de Gruijter, author of the article on the disappeared mercury batteries
The Exakta Ihagee Club de France, allowing me to publish older articles from the magazine l'Exacta
Michel Rouah, allowing me to use the lens data in his book Exakta Collection
Evgeny Shovikov, provider of the russian material in Other Languages
Mark Stuecheli and Jim Focht, providers of an enormous amount of scanned material, mostly from the USA
The participants in the Topica Exakta Discussion group
Michael Higgins & Ove Davidsen, providing research reports on Exakta lens resolution
Rainer Dierchen, provider of  a lot of material in the German language
Michael Sorms (Lukoszek), providing scans of all Ihagee Repair Manuals, Spare Parts Lists and many patents
Heinrich Degen, providing scans of many folders and brochures in the German language
Peter Lanczak, providing a really immense amount of information
Olaf Nattenberg, author of the article on "The Largest Exakta Exhibition in the World" in German (auf deutsch)
John Richardson, who supplied various contents
Valentin Sama, author of the articles in Foto-Video Actualidad

Problems, questions, additions or remarks

Problems with opening some items

Many items (files) are in .pdf format, which means that you need the program Adobe Reader (version 3.0 or higher) to read them.
If Acrobat Reader is installed on your machine, it should start automatically when you click on the item.
------- NB This works with Internet Explorer, but I'm not sure about other browsers.
------- Adobe Reader is absolutely free.

Remarks or questions in general

If you have remarks or questions about Ihagee, its products and history, its founder Johan Steenbergen or about this site, please send me a message. E-mail is the fastest and cheapest, but there are other ways.
You may address me in Dutch, English or German. In writing and if you keep it simple, French, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish may work as well. I prefer to answer in English or Dutch; German is also possible.

H.D. Ruys (or Hugo Ruys)
Tesselschadelaan 20
1217 LH HILVERSUM
The Netherlands

tel +31 35 6244597
e-mail: hugo.ruysATihagee.org   (for  AT  read @)