Carl Zeiss Jena DDR Flektogon 4/50
First shots with the Flektogon 50mm (foreground) for the Pentacon Six since I've been able to get the aperture repaired. My thanks to Clayton and his tech's at Camera Service in Smyrna, GA for their excellent work on this nice old piece.
Carl Zeiss Jena DDR Flektogon lenses were East German copies of Carl Zeiss Foundation Distagon designs!
The Flektogon 50 was designed for the Pentacon Six which is a vintage East German medium format 6X6 SLR film camera made from the 1956 until 1992. It was born out of the somewhat unreliable Praktisix which was modified and improved to become the Pentacon Six. I've included in the pic above a Topcor 58mm (35mm SLR format) for size comparison. The Flektogon 50 is normally a wide angle lens of around 35mm when mounted on the Pentacon Six. When adapted to fit a full frame digital sensor camera such as my A7RII, it comes out approximately to be a 58mm effective focal length. Note the size difference .. and the Topcor is actually a fairly large 58mm lens designed for 35mm.
No great subjects here but I was a bit anxious to see what this lens would render. And its very interesting results. It reproduces nice, slightly pastel colors with the mids to highlights appearing to be more faithful and showing some obvious cross color matrix in the darker regions. Another interesting aspect I found is that it has a bit of a compressed transmission characteristic. It produces an overall low apl with compressed gamma and highlights that clip easily. It's renders best on non contrasty scenes. Note, I have corrected for these aspects some in the images below.
f5.6, 1/500th sec, ISO 100
f5.6, 1/100th sec, ISO 100
f5.6, 1/500th sec, ISO 100
f8, 1/80th sec, ISO 1250
f5.6, 1/250th sec, ISO 100
Five colorful ladies relaxing over tea!
f5.6, 1/250th sec, ISO 100
f8, 1/160th sec, ISO 100
f8, 1/100th sec, ISO 200
f8, 1/100th sec, ISO 200
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