User talk:PentaconTRA

Pentacon was the name of a major camera manufacturer in the former GDR (German Democratic Republic), known as East Germany. Equipment was often labelled "Made in DDR", which means "Deutsche Demokratische Republik". It is reported by some sources that the name Pentacon was invented in the late 1940s by combining the words "Pentaprism" and "Contax". The Contax camera had been manufactured in Dresden prior to 1945 (from 1932 onwards), and in the late 1940's a camera calling itself Contax was manufactured with a pentaprism in Dresden, which was now part of the new separate state or Soviet occupation zone of East Germany. After disputes with the manufacturers of Contax cameras who had relocated to Stuttgart in West Germany, the camera reappeared with the name Pentacon. The state-owned company VEB Pentacon in East Germany grew through mergers and acquisitions, becoming a very large conglomerate in the final two decades of the GDR. The best-known camera with the Pentacon name was a medium format SLR (single lens reflex) camera with the name Pentacon Six (renamed "Pentacon Six TL" in 1968). This camera and its predecessor, the Praktisix, was produced from 1956 until shortly after the collapse of the GDR in 1990. Lenses for the Pentacon Six were made by Carl Zeiss Jena and by Meyer Optik Görlitz, which was eventually re-named "Pentacon". For more information on the Pentacon Six system, see From approximately 1986, a West German company was set up to market a new Medium Format SLR called the "Exakta 66" (not to be confused with an Exakta 66 from Dresden in 1936, and an Exakta 66 from Dresden in 1952). The new Exakta 66 was in fact largely based on a Pentacon Six chassis, but with Joseph Schneider Kreuznach lenses.