Altländer Kameratechnik Jork
 

Lens name	Aperture/ focal length	Type
Altaplan MH MC	2.8/80	ASB, re-labelled Arsenal lens

Arax
 

Lens name	Aperture/ focal length	Type
Arax MC	2.8/80	ASB, modified Arsenal lens
Arax MC	5.6/500	FB, modified Lytarkino Rubinar mirror lens

ASB = Automatische Springblende = Fully Automatic Diaphragm
FB = Feste (?) Blende = No diaphragm (as is standard with mirror lenses)

Atzmueller & Rendl Linz
 

Lens name	Aperture/ focal length	Type
Vario-Flex II with Beryl	6.8/90	tilt&shift
Vario-Flex II with Symmar	5.6/105	tilt&shift

I have no further information on these lenses.

Panagor

Panagor made an automatic 2× converter in the Pentacon Six mount.  One experienced user describes it as being of “amateur quality”.
For a review of this converter, see the Lens Test section.  To go to the lens test section, click here.

Rodenstock Muenchen

This was one of the great German (1945-1990, West German) photographic lens manufacturers, although the company now mainly specialises in lenses for spectacles (reading glasses).  Its photographic lenses have a high reputation for the quality of the images that they can produce.   The lenses that they made available for medium format cameras, including the Pentacon Six, were part of their “Imagon” range, which were essentially designed as portrait lenses, for use principally in a studio situation.  Further details are now located here.

Steinheil

In January 2015 I received a report that the lens manufacturer Steinheil of Munich, in West Germany (as it was at that time) offered two lenses with the Praktisix mount, an f/2.8/135mm lens, first manufactured with this mount in 1957 and an f/4.5/200mm lens first manufactured with this mount in 1958.  According to Clément Aguila and Michel Rouah, in their book "Exakta Collection", there were Steinheil lenses with these specifications in the Steinheil catalogue from 1953 and 1956, respectively, with the Exakta 35mm camera mount.  For the longer focal lengths on 35mm cameras, lens manufacturers frequently provided suitable mounts for lenses that were originally designed to cover medium format cameras, so the lenses with these focal lengths listed by Aguila and Rouah may have been previously designed for other (medium format) cameras, and may be the same ones that were subsequently offered for the Praktisix.  If these are the same lenses, then the details would be as follows (as taken from Aguila and Rouah's book):

Of course, I cannot at this point in time guarantee that the details given in this chart do indeed correspond to the Steinheil lenses that were offered in the Praktisix mount.  Furthermore, the fact that a manufacturer offered in its catalogue lenses of a given focal length in a particular camera mount is no guarantee that such combinations of lens and mount were ever manufactured and sold.

Tiger

Auto Tele Converter 2x
This was apparently at times marketed in the USA.  It appears to be a re-labelled Panagor converter.

WEP Hamburg

AUTO KINOTELEX 2x converter
This was a German brand name apparently applied principally to re-badged items from other manufacturers.  It appears to be a re-labelled Panagor converter.

It is reasonably easy to adapt other lenses to fit the Pentacon Six – at least if one does not include auto aperture control  –  and other manufacturers may have offered their lenses in the Pentacon Six mount.  I personally doubt if many of these lenses were available from stock in the Pentacon Six mount, and some of them may have never been produced in this mount.

For the same reason, it is possible to modify some medium-format lenses and almost any large-format lens for use on a Pentacon Six or Praktisix, and occasionally such privately-modified lenses appear.  It is obviously not possible to provide data on such lenses.

This data is based on published sources and information from a collector, to whom I express my thanks.

To go on to the next section, click below.
Next section (35mm equivalent focal lengths)
 

To go back to the beginning of the Lens Data section, click below and then choose the range of lenses that you want to read about.
Back to beginning of the Lens Data section

On to Lens Test section

Home

© TRA May 2002  Latest revision: May 2016