Going back to the Pentacon Six in 2025.

In 2022, I was gifted a Pentacon Six medium-format SLR camera. It was a beast and it worked like a beast.

Well, I should say, “when it worked.” See, the Pentacon Six is an amazing medium-format camera. But its internals are as delicate as mouse whispers.

The Pentacon Six – wait, it’s a 120 shooter AND an SLR camera?

I’ve worked with medium-format cameras in the past – my Rolleiflex Automat MX is a 120-film shooter, as was my Kodak Medalist II (“Kodak Red”), the Kowa Super 66, and the AGFA Clack. But my Rolleiflex, after 14 years of hard use, finally bit the dust last month – at the worst possible time (during my Holiday Train chase, ugh). And I haven’t used the Medalist in ages, and the Kowa and the Clack were given away.

In 2022, I used the Pentacon Six several times, including snagging this blue-ribbon photo of the Saratoga, Corinth & Hudson Railroad as it crossed Route 9N in Corinth.

And it did work with some test photos at my girlfriend’s backyard garden.

FINALLY getting my Pentacon Six to play nice.

But even then … this Pentacon Six had more issues than a comic book collector. And I don’t want to shoot a roll of film in the camera and PRAY that all twelve exposures come through.

So I’ve made a decision.

I just pulled the trigger on a new CLA’d (cleaned, lubricated and activated) Pentacon Six from a Ukrainian camera buff. Although this camera won’t have a lens when it arrives, I can use the lens from my current shelf-resting Pentacon Six (a Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f/2.8 monster), and keep the old Pentacon Six for spare parts.

Plus, the Pentacon Six has some adaptability to it. Not only are there plenty of attachable lenses for this unit, supposedly the Pentacon mount can also handle other lens glass – including Kiev and Praktix glass. There’s also several swappable viewfinders for this camera – this unit will have a waist-level finder, but there are others I can select.

This will be my 2025 challenge camera. And if I can get this camera to play nice, it will be part of my photographic team for 2025. For digital, I’ll use the Nikon Df. I still have my modified Nikon Df for infrared shooting. For 35mm film, there’s my Nikon F2S (“Nikon Athena”), while this camera will stand as my 120 film weapon.

The new camera should arrive on my doorstep by mid-January (seeing as it’s coming from Ukraine and all).

Here’s hoping this all works.

Fingers crossed.