3106.photography
Created 4 April 2009 ... Updated 26 April 2009
|
Pentacon Electra
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Plastic fantastic from the 1960s. Although it looks like this camera is made from metal, at least the front plate does, it's actually made fully from pastic, pretty strong black plastic actually. Of course the advantage is that it weighs next to nothing and still looks nice, from a distance but when you pick it up, it just looks and feels cheap, very cheap.
Film for this camera had the same size as standard 35mm film, but it was spooled in SL-Film Cartridges. ORWO's Schnelllade Kasetten (Rapid load cartridge) was the East German answer to Agfa Radid film system, which in itself was the answer to Kodak's Instamatic. With this system the film would be wound into the take up cartridge and removed without respooling. This way the film would wind from the new cartridge to the empty cartridge in a similar way as with 120 roll film. The main advantage was that film loading went a lot faster. As history shows however, none of these systems, neither ORWO, nor AGFA nor KODAK's survived on the market, which is at least in part due to the cheap built quality of the cameras using this system. The Pentacon electra was presented as the master piece of all SL cameras. Which might have been true at the time as not many cameras with automatic exposure were available. Nearly 50 years however, this camera does not look like a master piece :o) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Specifications
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All photos copyright of M. Koning 1997 - 2009
Note: Using the text or images on this site in an auction such as eBay without permission is a violation of your ebay Terms of Service. I will report you to ebay if I discover such a violation taking place. This may result in your account being cancelled. I also reserve the right to file claim for civil penalties.
Return