Pentacon 6: Exploring Medium Format Photography - by Polina Bogomolova

November 6, 2024 Polina Bogomolova

I always wanted to try a medium format camera, and, since this would be a new experience for me, I was also searching for a reasonable option as I was not sure how this experiment would turn out.

My preferences were the following:
1) affordable
2) manual
3) easy to find lenses
4) easy to repair (just in case)
5) and also a very important point for me - waist-level finder (WLF)

After some time on photo web-sites, multiple discussions with different experts, I decided to go after Pentacon six. This is my oldie but goldie beauty. I could not figure out when the camera was produced, and its configuration is quite basic: WLF as I wanted and Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 2,8/80. The camera is fully manual which is a big plus for me, as I prefer to measure everything myself.

I am not new to film photography, but I still had to do quite a bit of research in order to be able to find a working second-hand camera. In case you are also looking into buying Pentacon six, please check the following:

how many owners it had before you;
check the shutter speed - (especially 1/125 and 1/250), this model is known for having troubles with this speed. As the camera production started almost half a century ago, it really needs a CLA (good thing is that CLA in most cases recovers it);
do a test drive of the camera: buy a cheap film and try the camera on all shutter speeds (do not forget to put a note about every shot).

In my case, even though the camera had only one owner, who was very careful with the camera and took amazing care of it, the time has taken its toll: 1/125 and 1/250 did not work properly (the shutter did not get to the original position) as well as there was a light leakage.

Since in Bratislava/Slovakia there are few repair services/technicians who could help me or the waiting line was around 3 months, I decided to trust my camera to one of the Viennese servicemen. He performed CLA in 2-week time and returned my camera in mint condition.

I prefer to shoot colour film since I can always turn colour into bw and add more grain if necessary, while the opposite is impossible. My favourite films are kodak portra 160 and kodak gold. I am not a big fan of grain, therefore I tend to choose lower ISO.

For now I prefer this camera for street photography.