Pentacon lenses
Contents
Overview
The columns TYPE and aperture/focal length TOGETHER give the lens type names! For larger view, click here! image by Uwe Kulick (Image rights) |
Predecessors by Meyer Görlitz
The most Pentacon brand lenses were derived from classical East-German lens constructions. When the Pentacon combinate (Pentacon group) was founded in 1968 the famous German lens maker Hugo Meyer in Görlitz (since 1952 officially "VEB Feinoptisches Werk Görlitz") was incorporated into that group. The lens maker's brand name was changed from "Meyer Görlitz" to "Pentacon", and even Meyer's renowned trademarks like "Lydith" and "Orestor" were omitted. Since then all the successful former Meyer lens constructions were produced by Pentacon. Further lens development focused on the lens coating's improvement, resulting in advanced Pentacon lenses with "multicoating" (MC).
OEM made Pentacon lenses and "Exakta" lens brand
When the era of zoom lenses began Pentacon started trading rebadged OEM products. The camera trademark "Exakta" even seems to have been borrowed by Japanese lens makers for marketing standard zoom lenses for several popular lens mounts. Thus these "Exakta lenses" were neither Pentacon constructions nor Pentacon products.
Pentacon lens | was | OEM |
---|---|---|
Pentacon auto 2.8/29 Pentacon electric 2.8/29 |
Meyer Orestegon | |
Pentacon 3.5/30 | Meyer Lydith | |
Domiplan 2.8/50 | Meyer Domiplan | |
Pentacon auto 1.8/50 Pentacon electric 1.8/50 |
Meyer Oreston | |
Pentacon 2.8/100 Pentacon auto 2.8/100 Pentacon electric 2.8/100 |
Meyer Orestor | |
Pentacon 2.8/135 Pentacon auto 2.8/135 Pentacon electric 2.8/135 |
Meyer Orestor | |
Pentacon 4/200 | Meyer Orestegor (5 elements) | |
Pentacon 4/300 | Meyer Orestegor (5 elements) | |
Pentacon 5.6/500 | Meyer Orestegor (4 elements) | |
Pentacon 3.5/39-80 electric multicoating | Sigma multi-coated 1:3.5 f=39~80mm | Sigma |
electric lens and enhanced "electric" M42 lens mount image by TrueLoveOne (Image rights) |
"electric" lenses
Further developments by Pentacon were the outer appeareance of the lenses which was changed to more modern black lens barrels with white, green and red inscriptions, and the "electric" lens series which was made for the Praktica "electric" SLR body series. The tree electrical contact pins of an "electric" Pentacon lens transfers the aperture setting into the camera body which therefore has 3 electrical contact "landing zones" for connecting with these pins. Smaller contact points on the cameras weren't possible since the lens mount is an M42 screw mount, but larger contact areas weren't necessary since M42 mounts with aperture release lever and M42 lenses with aperture release pin necessarily had normalized thread entry positions. This made the production of lenses for the electrically enhanced M42 mount also possible for other lens makers, mainly Carl Zeiss Jena, but also for Japanese lens makers.
Prakticar lenses
Later the Praktica SLR body series was enhanced with a modern bayonet lens system represented by the Praktica B camera series. Most Prakticar lenses were Pentacon products, most of them derived from the Pentacon lenses.