Pentacon
Encyclopedia
Pentacon is the company name of a once-important camera manufacturer in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
The name Pentacon is derived from the brand Contax
Contax
Contax was a camera brand noted for its unique technical innovation and a wide range of Zeiss lenses, noted for their high optical quality. Its final incarnation was a line of 35 mm, medium format and digital cameras engineered and manufactured by Kyocera, and featuring modern Zeiss optics...
of Zeiss Ikon Kamerawerke in Dresden and Pentagon
Pentagon
In geometry, a pentagon is any five-sided polygon. A pentagon may be simple or self-intersecting. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagram is an example of a self-intersecting pentagon.- Regular pentagons :In a regular pentagon, all sides are equal in length and...
, as a Pentaprism for Single-Lens Reflex (SLR)
Single-lens reflex camera
A single-lens reflex camera is a camera that typically uses a semi-automatic moving mirror system that permits the photographer to see exactly what will be captured by the film or digital imaging system, as opposed to pre-SLR cameras where the view through the viewfinder could be significantly...
cameras was for the first time developed in Dresden. The cross section
Cross section (geometry)
In geometry, a cross-section is the intersection of a figure in 2-dimensional space with a line, or of a body in 3-dimensional space with a plane, etc...
of this prism has a pentagonal shape.
Pentacon is best known for producing the SLR cameras of the Praktica
Praktica
Praktica is a brand of camera manufactured by Pentacon in Dresden in eastern Germany, formerly within the GDR prior to reunification. Pentacon is the modern-day successor to Dresden camera firms such as Zeiss Ikon, and for many years Dresden was the world's largest producer of cameras...
-series as well as the medium format camera Pentacon Six
Pentacon Six
The Pentacon Six is an single-lens reflex medium format camera system made by Pentacon from 1956 to 1992. The Six accepts lenses with the Pentacon Six mount, a breech-lock bayonet mount.- Praktisix :...
, the Pentacon Super and various cameras of the Exa series.
Pentacon also produced slide projector
Slide projector
A slide projector is an opto-mechanical device to view photographic slides. Slide projectors were common in the 1950s to the 1970s as a form of entertainment; family members and friends would gather to view slide shows...
s.
History
In 1959 several Dresden camera manufacturers, among them VEB Kamerawerke Freital, were joined to create Volkseigener BetriebVolkseigener Betrieb
The Volkseigener Betrieb was the legal form of industrial enterprise in East Germany...
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 federal board concerned with the privatisation of East German companies) and was selected for closure instead of compete 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
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....
, 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
Panoramic photography
Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography. The term has also been applied to a photograph that is cropped to a relatively wide aspect ratio...
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
Photokina
The photokina is the world's largest trade fair for the photographic and imaging industries. The first photokina was held in Cologne, Germany, in 1950, and it is now held biannually in September at the koelnmesse Trade Fair and Exhibition Centre...
2010 in Cologne, Germany. The Scan 7000 is operated with SilverFast
SilverFast
SilverFast is software for scanning and image processing, including photos, documents and slides, developed by LaserSoft Imaging.- History :...
and has a resolution of 20.000 x 20.000 pixels.