Tales on Film

When I saw this little camera on ebay at 1 euro, I could not pass it on. The Penti II is a half-frame, fully manual, zone-focus rapid system camera with a fixed 3,5/30mm lens. They were made with a golden or silver finish. It was made from 1961 by VEB Kamera- und Kinowerk in Dresden, Germany and sold out in 1977. This Penti II has an coupled selenium meter integrated in the black squares you see on eiter side of the viewfinder. Because it only takes 18x24mm photos, it takes portraits in it’s natural position.

As mine is already pretty beaten up since and before I got it, I decided it can’t hurt to put in my bag and have it swim around. It makes half-frames, which means that it feels like it takes ages to finish the film. As you can only put up to about 20 normal 35mm frames in the agfa rapid cassette, it was taking 40 photos before it finished. It make surprisingly good photos for such a consumer camera. There are however two odd things about this camera. It has an very interesting feature or having a stick come out of the side of the camera, to advance it. The pressure plate for the film in the Penti is also not attached to the back, like with almost all 35mm, it has a built-in plate that has to be closed after you insert film.

I do like this camera, although I have to respool film every time I want to use it. Also on this particular camera the advance lever doesn’t come out of the camera most of the time, I have to press the shutterbutton and push the lever back in a couple of times and then the advance lever does come out the side of the camera. It’s a convenient sized camera to hold in your bag for the occasional snapshot. It’s very fun to find out what you have shot at the beginning of the film, it could be another season, city, country, … I just love it for it’s simplicity and excellent performance.