Pentacon Six

The Pentacon Six is a complete medium format SLR system, taking 12 6x6 exposures on 120 roll film. Its predecessor was Kamera-Werke's Praktisix, and both share the same bayonet lens mount. This Pentacon Six bayonet mount received lenses from the Carl Zeiss factory at Jena, in Germany, as well as from Schneider. The sovietic factory Arsenal made a similar camera, the Kiev 6, and later the Kiev 60.

The basic kit consists of a Carl Zeiss Biometar 1:2.8 80mm, a focussing screen and a waist level finder. There is a huge amount of lenses available, from a 30mm "Fish-eye" wide angle lens to a 1000mm telephoto lens. There are still lenses under production for this mount, by both Arsenal factory at Kiev and Hartblei factory at the Czech Republic. There are also several screen focussing models, from simpler designs to Fresnel screens. The same goes for the finders, and thw waist level finder can be replaced by others, such as the eye level view finder that was sold with and without metering system. Those metering viewers were introduced in 1968: since then, the camera became the Pentacon Six TL. Actually, never changed in the camera itself, only the availability of those finders allowing Through-The-Lens metering did change.

The Pentacon Six has a focal plane shutter, with speeds between 1 second and 1/1000. There is also B mode plus flash synchronization at 1/30. Maximum speed of this shutter is not bad for that era, the Sixties: most of the medium format cameras available used central shutters, with top speed of 1/500. Focal plane shutter has several advantages: mainly, lenses are cheaper since there is no shutter required; also, lower maximum apertures can be achieved with this kind of design.

The finder, with or without metering, covers approximately 70% of the actual image (around 3.8cm out of 5.7cm, to be more precise). The waist level view finder shows a slightly bigger image, around 4.4cm.

The advance lever has a long travel, around 200 degrees. Never should this lever be left to return free to its initial position (as it is quite strong and the automatic film advance can be easily damaged that way) but should be accompanied with the thumb to its resting position.

Best reference about this system is TRA's pages: PentaconSix.com

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