A Rescued Pentacon ZI

<p>I picked this camera up at the November Camera Show in New Jersey. As expected in this camera line, the curtains were bone-dry and was praying for at least no pin holes. It also came with a nice Isco-Gottingen Westagon 50mm 2.0 semi-automatic lens which I was quite interested in. The camera was very clean on the outside with chrome being particularly nice and not tarnished. All this set me back about $15.</p>

<p>I took it home, and discovered that the curtains were full of pin holes :-( just like a starry night. I used some liquid neoprene to coat them, however the speeds suffered due to the dryness of the curtains. I decided to take it to my repairman and leave it in his capable hands. I turned my attention to the lens which had milky haze inside its elements. I took it apart cell by cell and was astonished at how fragile each cell was, so I was extra careful in wiping them with Zeiss fluid and microfiber, they cleaned up nicely and the blades were responding perfectly to the large Exakta-style actuator on the right side.</p>

<p>Back to the camera - my repairman replaced the curtains from a salvage and I finally had a working camera with a clean lens. I put 4 rolls through it in December 2013, but I must confess, the film processing has been horribly sub par... Our only Walgreens which still does film, lost its Fuji Frontier processor to Hurricane Sandy, and their Noritsu replacement, is just not up to the task, often times curling and breaking the film in the process, or having awful temperature control, visible in badly processed c/41 rolls.<br>

Wanted to share some carefully selected photos and the camera of course:<br>

</p>

<hr />

<div></div>

<p>Pentacon ZI profile</p><div></div>

<p>Splash</p><div></div>

<p>Cape Charles Pier</p><div></div>

<p>Cape Charles Shoreline</p><div></div>

<p>Low Tide</p><div></div>

<p>Colonial</p><div></div>

<p>Log House</p><div></div>

<p>Red Door Mill</p><div></div>

<p>Sink</p><div></div>

<p>Sunset over Jetty</p><div></div>

<p>Returning from Fishing -</p>

<p>With image</p><div></div>

<p>Sleepy Harbor Sunset</p><div></div>

<p>Windy Landscape</p><div></div>

<p>Surfer Boys</p><div></div>

<p>A nice series of images, Ralf. Low Tide and Windy Landscape stand out to me. Good salvage work on an otherwise clean looking Pentacon.</p>

<p>Thanks Louis. Appreciate the comments and feedback.</p>

<p>The lens looks a bit as if it were made to fit on the Edixa SLRs, some of their lenses had a very similar actuator for the aperture which would also actuate the shutter release located on the front plate of the cameras. However, the lenses for the Edixa had a slightly different orientation of the aperture actuator. </p>

<p>Beautiful pictures from a lovely camera. I was hoping to buy one of these; somehow it was not available on this side of the world within my budget. Your price seems very reasonable. Thanks for the post. sp.</p>

<p>Fine collection of images, <strong>Ralf</strong>. You're lucky with the lens; the 50mm Westagon f/2 seems to be somewhat less common than the f/1.9, and fetches quite respectable prices. What is the formula? I recall it has rather a nice 10-bladed iris. Fine example of the Pentacon, too, well worth your expenditure on the replacement curtains. "Cape Charles Shoreline" has a lovely pictorial quality.</p>

Great images and nice looking camera. Thanks for sharing.

<p>I <em>love</em> "Windy Landscape." Great composition. <em>VERY</em> nice!</p>

<p>Really nice work and sincere thanks for taking the trouble to reanimate it. I'm not exactly sure why, but I like the sinks image the best.</p>

<p>I am not a great fan of the West German lenses, however, but this one seems to show off nicely.</p>

<p>Did I ever mention that I am a huge fan of the Contax-Pentacon SLRs?</p><div></div>

<p>Good work Ralf, both with the rescue and the images. I think I like "Low Tide" the best. That 50 seems to be a nice performer. Maybe reading about your repair will help motivate me to finally get around to opening up my 50/1.4 Nikkor-S</p>