Well, this was fun. I basically Frankenstein’ed a new-to-me Pentacon Six TL medium format camera by grabbing parts from various eBay auctions, along with reusing the lens from my previous did-not-like-to-work-on-any-day-ending-in-a-Y Pentacon Six.
The chassis for the Six TL came from Ontario; the new waist-level prism was from Washington State, and the 80mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar lens came off my old Pentacon camera. You know … the one that worked maybe twice in its entire existence.
So here’s what the new shooter looks like as it’s all cobbled together.
I honestly thought I purchased a Pentacon Six camera for 2025, but I actually received a Pentacon Six TL model – the later edition with some refinements and the like. Well, I did have my heart set on a classic Pentacon Six, but at this point in my existence, beggars can’t be choosers.
So now for the big test. Let’s put a roll of 120 film in this bad boy, take it out for a photo walk, and see if everything works. I mean, I hope it works. I really hope it works. Seriously. Honestly.
And for this test, I cracked open a fresh roll of Kodak Ektar 100. I just want this camera to give me images, I’m not ready to confirm if they’ll be Competition Season-worthy images. Yet.
And over the weekend, these came back from the developers.
Okay. I have a starting point here.
The camera WILL take photos. That’s a plus.
But I had to seriously crop these photos down, because each picture had a strange black mask on the bottom third of every image. Kinda looked like this.
I’m kinda suspecting that MIGHT be a shutter curtain issue, but I can’t confirm. I’ll take a few more test shots, then I’ll drop the chassis off at CameraWorks and have my camera tech Allan go over it and find out his diagnosis.
But as it is … as I’ve said before … I’ve got a starting point.
Let’s go forward from here.
Chuck The Writer 
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