The Pentacon Six TL is a competent medium format SLR. It is heavy, it sounds like a damp thump rather than a satisfying click, and the body has a reputation for reliability issues. None of that is the point. The point is that it costs almost nothing on the used market, and the Carl Zeiss Jena lenses you can mount on it are genuinely excellent and also cheap by medium format standards.
This is the bit most Pentacon Six reviews miss: the camera is the cheap entry ticket to a lens system that punches well above its price. The body is fine. The lenses are the reason to buy.
I went out with this one in Bristol on a miserable wet morning, shot three rolls through four different lenses, and came back with a clear answer to the “are they actually any good” question. Yes, with caveats.
What it is
The Pentacon Six TL was built in the famous Pentacon factories of East Germany in the late 60s and early 70s. It shoots 6x6 square frames on 120 film, giving you 12 exposures per roll. The form factor is upright SLR rather than the boxy waist-level shape of a Bronica S2A or Hasselblad. That makes it feel familiar to anyone progressing from 35mm SLR, just bigger and chunkier.
The “TL” designation refers to the through-the-lens metering prism that the TL version was introduced with. The viewfinder is interchangeable, so you can swap the metered prism for a plain prism, a waist-level finder, or other options. The lens mount is also interchangeable, which is the bit that matters enormously.
Mine carries a Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f2.8 in the photos. Made in the GDR (German Democratic Republic), which is the same thing as the DDR you sometimes see stamped on these lenses. East Germany, two names for the same country, shorthand pretty much interchangeable on the cameras and the lenses.
![PLACEHOLDER: the Pentacon Six TL with the Biometar 80mm f2.8, showing the upright SLR form factor]
The mount, which is the actual feature
The Pentacon Six lens mount is one of the most widely used mounts in medium format history. Cameras that share it include:
- Pentacon Six family (TL and earlier versions)
- Kiev 60, the Soviet copy
- Kiev 6C
- Some versions of the Kiev 88
Across that range of cameras, an enormous number of lenses got made: Pentacon’s own, Carl Zeiss Jena, Kiev, various Soviet manufacturers, and Meyer-Optik. The Carl Zeiss Jena glass especially is the star: Biometar, Flektogon, Sonnar, all of it produced in East Germany during the Cold War to genuinely excellent standards.
This is the key economic insight. Because so many cameras share the mount and so many lenses got made over decades, the secondhand supply is huge and prices are correspondingly low. You can build a serious lens kit for far less than the equivalent Hasselblad or Rolleiflex glass would cost.
The build, the weight, the sound
It is big and it is heavy. Not the heaviest medium format camera I have ever picked up, but properly chunky.
- Body plus 80mm f2.8: 1.4 kilos (3.1 lbs)
- Body plus 180mm f2.8: 2.5 kilos (5.5 lbs)
You will know if you have one of these around your neck for the day.
There is one specific complaint I have, which is the sound. The shutter release on the Pentacon Six produces what I would call a dull waft, where my Kiev 60 (essentially the Soviet clone of the same design) produces a zingy, mechanical crash. The Pentacon Six sound gives me less confidence in the mechanism, even though the photos prove there is nothing actually wrong with it. It is purely psychological. I just like my cameras to sound more like clockwork and less like a wet thud.
That is a personal hangup. I mention it because if you are similarly fussy about camera noises, the Pentacon Six is one to listen to before you commit.
The reliability question
You should know about this before buying. The Pentacon Six has a reputation, fairly earned, for various reliability issues:
- Shutter problems
- Film transport issues (uneven frame spacing, jamming)
- Light leaks on certain models
The good news, and it is significant: because these cameras were produced in huge numbers over a long run, plenty of camera repairers will work on them. Parts are findable. Spares can be cannibalised from other bodies. This is in marked contrast to some of the cameras I have featured on the channel previously. The Bronica S2A is harder to find people to work on, the Norita 66 sitting on my shelf is essentially un-repairable now, both because production was lower and the supply of donor parts is shrinking.
So the Pentacon Six is unreliable enough to be a real consideration, but reliable in the sense that the ecosystem around it can keep yours working. If something fails, you have a path to a fix.
There is also an excellent resource for anyone going down this road: pentaconsix.com, run by a chap called Trevor, which has an enormous amount of information about the camera, the lenses, the history, the various political twists of East-versus-West optical manufacturing during the Cold War. Worth a long read if you are considering the system.
The shoot
Bristol city centre on a cold Saturday morning. Two or three degrees, overcast, occasional teasing breaks in the cloud that never quite delivered actual sunlight. By the time I got down to the harbourside it was raining, and it pretty much kept raining for the rest of the shoot. Not ideal conditions for testing a camera, but if I waited for good light in Britain I would never test anything.
I took four lenses:
- Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f2.8 (the standard)
- Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 50mm f4 (wide)
- Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 180mm f2.8 (medium tele)
- Meyer-Optik 400mm f5.5 (the long one I had been warned was terrible)
Three rolls of film: Kodak Portra 400 for colour, Ilford FP4 for black and white. Half a second at f16 for the wider city scenes, faster for the rowers in the harbour, longer exposures for the cranes at M Shed.
The wider compositions with the 80mm were the best frames of the day, mostly architectural with the Bristol Hotel sign behind a bridge, and some street work with slow-shutter motion blur as people walked past. The 50mm Flektogon came out for the harbourside cranes, which played to its wider field of view. The Sonnar 180mm I had used before on the Kiev 60 video and knew was good.
The Meyer-Optik 400mm went out for some rowing shots and confirmed everything I had read about it.
![PLACEHOLDER: a black and white frame from the harbourside, showing what the Biometar 80mm at f16 can produce on FP4]
What I learned
Two overriding impressions.
The camera takes great photographs when paired with a good lens. The Biometar 80mm and the Flektogon 50mm both produced lovely sharp negatives with the kind of three-dimensional rendering you expect from Carl Zeiss glass. The Sonnar 180mm I had not had a chance to use heavily that day but it had proven itself previously on the Kiev 60.
The Meyer-Optik 400mm is, as advertised, not great. I had read that these lenses were poor and I cannot disagree with that assessment. Multiple attempts at the rowers in the harbour gave me soft, vignetted, frankly mediocre frames. Not the camera’s fault. Not even the conditions’ fault, really. Bad lenses are bad in any conditions. The camera is only as good as the glass on the front.
This is the genuinely important point about Pentacon Six reviews. The camera is a vehicle. What matters is what you mount on it. If you put Carl Zeiss Jena glass on it, you get Carl Zeiss Jena results, which are genuinely excellent. If you put a Meyer-Optik 400mm on it, you get Meyer-Optik 400mm results, which are not.
This is true of any camera system, of course. But it matters more here than usual because the lens supply is so varied (so many manufacturers, so many decades of production) that you really need to research what you are buying. Stick with the well-regarded Carl Zeiss Jena pieces and you will be very happy. Pick up bargain-bin Soviet lenses with no reputation and your mileage may vary considerably.
The value proposition
Here is the bit that makes the Pentacon Six genuinely interesting.
A body without a lens sells for around £150. That is staggering for a working medium format SLR with through-the-lens metering. The lenses are also reasonable:
- Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f2.8: around £150
- Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 50mm f4: around £200-250
- Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 180mm f2.8: more, but still accessible
So you can build a real two-lens working kit (body, 80mm, 50mm) for around £500 total. That is the entry point to a Carl Zeiss Jena medium format system, which is genuinely good glass. Compare that to a Hasselblad system at four to five times the price, or even my Rolleiflex SLX, where bodies are cheap but the Carl Zeiss West-side lenses start at £300-400 each.
This is the Pentacon Six’s real argument. It is a relatively affordable way into a serious lens system.
The viewfinder, briefly
The TL version’s metered prism finder works, but it is not the most pleasant viewfinder I have used. I found focusing relatively difficult, partly because of the prism’s brightness, partly because the focusing screen is not as crisp as I would like. This is splitting hairs given the price of the camera, and you can swap to a different finder type if it bothers you. But know it going in.
Waist-level finders work well on this camera. Worth considering if you find the prism dim.
The verdict
The Pentacon Six TL is genuinely worth buying if you want a Carl Zeiss Jena medium format kit on a real budget. It is a capable, if unrefined, body that gets you access to one of the most varied and affordable lens systems in medium format.
What works:
- Carl Zeiss Jena lens access at prices nothing else in medium format can touch
- Huge variety of lenses (Pentacon, Kiev, Carl Zeiss Jena, Meyer-Optik) across the same mount
- 6x6 negatives with great glass on the front
- Repairability thanks to the huge production run and active repair community
- Trevor’s pentaconsix.com as a community resource
What doesn’t:
- Heavy for the format (1.4kg with the 80mm, much more with the 180mm)
- Reliability is a real consideration; you will probably need it serviced at some point
- The sound lacks the satisfying mechanical confidence of better-built medium format bodies
- Viewfinder is workable but not great
- Some lenses are genuinely poor, particularly some of the longer Meyer-Optik options; research what you buy
If you have ever wanted to shoot medium format with Carl Zeiss Jena glass and have been put off by the price of Hasselblad, the Pentacon Six is the answer. You buy in for under £500 and you can keep adding lenses for under £200 a piece. For an East German camera that was being produced during the Cold War, that is a genuinely remarkable inheritance to leave us.
I gave my Pentacon Six away to a viewer after this review. The point being made is not “I did not like it.” The point is that they are cheap enough and plentiful enough that giving one away barely registers. Try one. They are worth trying.