Praktica B100 electronic camera with Pentacon 200mm lens

Pentacon is the company name of a camera manufacturer in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. The name Pentacon is derived from the brand Contax of

Zeiss Ikon Carl Zeiss AG (), branded as ZEISS, is a German manufacturer of optical systems and optoelectronics, founded in Jena, Germany in 1846 by optician Carl Zeiss. Together with Ernst Abbe (joined 1866) and Otto Schott (joined 1884) he laid the ...

Kamerawerke in Dresden and Pentagon, as a Pentaprism for Single-Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras was for the first time developed in Dresden. The

cross section Cross section may refer to: * Cross section (geometry) ** Cross-sectional views in architecture & engineering 3D *Cross section (geology) * Cross section (electronics) * Radar cross section, measure of detectability * Cross section (physics) **Abs ...

of this prism has a pentagonal shape. Pentacon is best known for producing the SLR cameras of the Praktica-series as well as the

medium format Medium format has traditionally referred to a film format in photography and the related cameras and equipment that use film. Nowadays, the term applies to film and digital cameras that record images on media larger than the used in 35&nbs ...

camera

Pentacon Six The Pentacon Six is a single-lens reflex (SLR) medium format camera system made by East German manufacturer Pentacon from 1966 to 1992. The Six accepts lenses with the Pentacon Six mount, a breech-lock bayonet mount. History Praktisix The P ...

, the Pentacon Super and various cameras of the Exa series. Pentacon also produced

slide projector A slide projector is an opto-mechanical device for showing photographic slides. 35 mm slide projectors, direct descendants of the larger-format magic lantern, first came into widespread use during the 1950s as a form of occasional hom ...

History

In 1959 several Dresden camera manufacturers, among them VEB Kamerawerke Freital, were joined to create

Volkseigener Betrieb The Publicly Owned Enterprise (german: Volkseigener Betrieb; abbreviated VEB) was the main legal form of industrial enterprise in East Germany. They were all publicly owned and were formed after mass nationalisation between 1945 and the early 1960 ...

Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden, which was renamed in 1964 to VEB Pentacon Dresden. In 1968, VEB Feinoptisches Werk Görlitz was integrated into VEB Pentacon. Accordingly, the former Meyer-Optik Görlitz lenses were now renamed to ”Pentacon“ . After German reunification in 1990 Pentacon, as with most East German companies, came to be possessed by the

Treuhandanstalt The (" Trust agency"), colloquially referred to as , was an agency established by the government of the German Democratic Republic to reprivatise/privatise East German enterprises, Volkseigene Betriebe (VEBs), prior to German reunification. C ...

(the federal board concerned with the privatisation of East German companies) and was selected for closure instead of sale. It was deemed that company was grossly inefficient, employing six thousand staff when it could have sufficed with one thousand, and selling its cameras at a loss. Liquidation began on October 2, 1990 (one day before official reunification), and production ceased on June 30, 1991. By then it had shed nearly three thousand employees to retain a total of 3331 - the next day all but 232 were laid off. Investor Heinrich Manderman, who had previously been involved in resurrecting lensmaker

Schneider Kreuznach Schneider Kreuznach () is the abbreviated name of the company Jos. Schneider Optische Werke GmbH, which is sometimes also simply referred to as Schneider. They are a manufacturer of industrial and photographic optics. The company was founded on ...

, purchased the rights to the Pentacon brands and several portions of its assets, including the former military production building in Dresden. The company was re-established as Pentacon GmbH, a member of the Jos. Schneider group. Production of cameras and lenses continues, but is now outsourced to South Korea. Other parts of the former Pentacon company was sold to Noble and today belong to Kamera Werk Dresden, which, among other products, manufacture panoramic cameras under the Noblex brand, and cameras for industrial use under the Loglux brand. Pentacon also produces scanner cameras. The latest model, the Scan 7000, was introduced at the

photokina 2010 Photokina (rendered in the promoters' branding as "photokina") is a trade fair held in Europe for the photographic and imaging industries. It is the world's largest such trade fair. The first Photokina was held in Cologne, Germany, in 1950, an ...

in Cologne, Germany. The Scan 7000 is operated with

SilverFast SilverFast is the name of a family of software for image scanning and processing, including photos, documents and slides, developed by LaserSoft Imaging. There are also other applications for image processing using digital cameras or printers a ...

and has a resolution of 20.000 × 20.000 pixels.

External links

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Pentacon GmbH

Jos. Schneider Optische Werke

Bildtonmaschine "Dresden" des VEB aus dem Staatsratsgebäude
{{Authority control Photography companies of Germany Lens manufacturers Photography in East Germany Manufacturing companies based in Dresden Manufacturing companies established in 1959 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1991 1959 establishments in East Germany 1991 disestablishments in Germany Re-established companies Manufacturing companies established in 1997 1997 establishments in Germany German brands Companies of East Germany