The Praktica B200 winders
When the Praktica B200 was developed in 1978/79, VEB Pentacon had a lot of problems to get the shutter mechanism finished. They decided not to develope - but to import - the camera-electronics from NEC, Zoom lenses from Sigma and winders from different Japanese companies such as Y.I.C.
As a result, the winding mechanism of the B200 was constructed to fit the Japanese winders. I am pretty shure that these Japanese concepts for winders was patented. This might be the reason why Pentacon later on changed the manner the winding mechanism worked (see video below) and made their own winders.
Here you can see one of the original Japanese winders which was mainly thought for export into western countries - it was almost impossible to buy one in the GDR. By the end of the 1980s this situation had become quite dissatisfying. Pentacon started to develope an own TTL-flash and an own winder for their new BX20. But the ambition was to construct this winder in a way that it was compatible for both B200 and BX series. Unfortunately this lead to quite a complicated mechanism making the whole instrument not very reliable - at least not for the B200 series, where the clutch has to rotate back after every cocking process.
The original Japanese winder works both B200 and BX20 - but it is much more reliable and faster. But I think it´s special mechanism was patented and that´s why couldn´t be directly copied by Pentacon.
