Penti

Penti with Meyer

Once the Eastgerman optical industry introduced a cocurrent 35mm film load system to Agfa's Westgerman Rapid film. This SL system (SL-System=Schnell-Lade-System : Fast Load System) used two equal cartridges, one loaded, the other empty. The film advance system shifted the the film via image plane from one cartridge into the other, image by image.

SL film cartrigdes and Penti's camera back opened

Pentacon's half-frame camera Penti may have been the finest compact camera for this film load system, a viewfinder camera with a complete set of manual setting controls, all as rings around the lens: one for distance, one for aperture, and one for shutter speed. It could make 24 18×24mm exposures on one stripe of 35mm film, with a 1:3.5/30 lens, a Meyer Domiplan or a Meyer Trioplan. Its specialty was the long film advance button. Once pushed into the camera the film was advanced to the next exposure. After exposure the button appeared again in full length so that forgetting film advance was never an issue with this camera. Voigtländer's Vitessa had a similar feature.

Penti II with selenium match-needle meter

In 1961 the Penti II followed. This version made it a real classic, combining the full featured viewfinder camera with viewfinder-controlled coupled match-needle selenium meter. It was produced until 1977.