This was my first manual focus lens. It might not be the greatest, but it is my eyeopener to old gear.
Pentacon 29mm with camera Praktica EE2
My purchase
I bought this lens attached to a camera on Tradera (swedish ebay). It was about 20$, with the camera. A lot of old stuff is cheaper in Sweden then on international ebay, there are not so many buyers. Did I make a bargain? Well, lets find out…
The camera attached was a Praktica EE2. The reason I bought the kit was that I wanted some prime lens close to wide angle. I had mostly landscape photography in mind.
Back of Pentacon 29mm/2.8
Pentacon Auto 29mm/2.8, the lens
This version is a M42 screwmount. As you might have noticed it’s an odd focal length, 29mm. The 1mm difference from the more usual 28mm is not something you notice much. On a crop-camera like my Canon EOS 350D this 29mm lens becomes a 46,6 mm lens.
Everything on the lens is manual, although there is a aperture-pin for some auto function on the Praktica. All in good condition, focus and aperture rings worked ok. The lens fitted my Canon-camera good.
The reputation for this line of lenses from Pentacon is not great (with the exception of the 135mm). But lets take a close look at this little 29mm-lens.
My impression of the lens
My first impression of this lens came from a portrait of my daughter, which was fantastic. It was shot indoors, in good light and from above (my daughter looking up). Sharp where it should be and soft bokeh, war colours.
Portrait
When it came to landscapes my first test was in swedish forest with dark, hard contrast and some harsh backlight. The images was ok, but nothing special at all. It seemed it had a hard time dealing with the big contrast, but to be honest so did my new Sigma AF-zoom.
Landscape over Tysslingen
Later landscape images with lower contrast and more summer and colourful has turned out ok, I think. Higher performance then reputation lead me to believe.
Pros
+ Nice colours in right conditions
+ Sharpness achievable
+ Nice build quality
+ Good for warm and close-up portraits
Cons
– No real wideangle with sensor crop, closer to normal focal length.
- The aperturering is close to the camera, which can cause problems.
- Unreliable performer, sometimes dark colours go weird
Recommendation
If you can not get something really good in that range (like a Yashica ML), get this Pentacon instead an play with it for a while. Maybe it’ll surprise you.
Lannafors lanthandel
Gärdsgård
Junk car
The company Pentacon and Prakticas
VEB Pentacon was an East German camera- and lens maker formed in 1964 and was closed in 1991 after the fall of the east block. It made Praktica-cameras and a lot of them has Carl Zeiss-lenses (”aus Jena”) so keep an eye out for these cameras. My EE2-version has a very distinct ”klonk” when pressing the exposure-button, which is a little bit charming.
Reading
Mattias, do you have any experience of using a M42-adaptor on a digitial house? I’m having an EOS450, and there are a lot of lenses with the M42-connection on Tradera.
Will it work well (in manual mode of course), or should I forget the idea of using M42-lenses on my EOS450?
Yes, have one on my EOS 350D. I bought a adapter with AF-confirm because someone told me it was necassary for the 350D, but now I’m not sure that it is. An adapter without this function is a lot cheaper.
You could check forums like mflenses.com and groups on Flickr to fins someone with the 450D that uses manual lenses, then maybe you can buy the cheaper version of adapter.
I’m going to add some useful Flickr-groups to the links later today.
Oh, by the way, I bough mine from http://www.kaffebrus.com, but I know they are also on cyberphoto, scandinavian photo and auction sites like Tradera.
I recently acquired a Pentacon Hexacon camera without a lens. It is not working, but I plan to use it primarily as part of my modest camera collection. However, I can’t seem to locate a lens for this camera. Any places in Sweden I could contact? And do you know of nay reputable repair place if Should desire to get it repaired. (I am not a dealer –just a private citizen.) I might be interested in buying a working camera if I could find a decent one at a reasonable price. I have long been interested I the Prakticas.
– Lee
No sorry, I just bought it from swedish ebay “Tradera”, mine is M42-mount so there are many options on lens for it.
You probably will have better luck to find one on international ebay – the swedish market is quite small. Check also with http://www.praktica-users.com, they are probably experts on it :) Other places to check around is forum.mflenses.com, and maybe there’s flickr groups for Praktica-cameras. Pentacon lenses is often seen on http://ebay.co.uk
I have one of these, which I found in a used lens bin in a local antiques shop for £8. It’s mechanically very good, with a clicky aperture, and it feels tough; optically I found that it was a bit disappointing around the edges even on my cropped 350D. I use it on my 5D every so often as a “don’t care if it gets smashed” lens and it’s not bad for snapshots. The vignetting at f2.8 is very arty. Even stopping right down it never becomes very sharp, and it distorts around the edges, and it’s surprisingly large. I find that the aperture ring sticks out and is easy to use.
There’s also a Pentacon 30mm which I used to have, but it bangs against the 5D’s mirror on infinity focus.
I’ve heard it had great variations in qulity in the porduction of the lens. I suspect I got a good one.
They do vary a lot mine is a bit battered but also ok the 30mm Pentacon aka Meyer ‘Lydith’ is a very good lens its a preset and has the aperture ring on the front like a lot of Russian optics, works fine on a Samsung /Pentax Dslr in manual and AV mode and clears mirror ok.
I like the early Pentacon 50, looks very similar in the finish to my aus Jena 135mm