Put on the Tele (Part 1)

Pentacon 5,6 / 500mm

by Marwan El Mozayen / SilvergrainClassics

I suppose everyone who is creative professionally or in his spare time, ends up at some point in the creative hole. Once there, it looks like nothing new is coming, you have no ideas, you go around in circles, and as a result you lose the fun of it all. In my case it is then mostly related to photography. There are 1001 tips and advice here that should or can help. For me personally there are several ways with which I can then often shake myself awake again. One of these ways is the restriction to something apparently more complicated that tears you out of the comfort zone.

From the Aesthetics of Smartphone Lenses to the “Super Telephoto Lens”

When I talk to many photographers and we discuss lenses, I notice that the majority of my conversation partners almost exclusively prefer focal lengths around 35mm, i.e. the moderate wide angle in the 35mm range. They like to use this especially on a viewfinder camera and on top with a particularly large aperture.

And let’s face it, the light wide angle dominates social media, not only because of the fact that it’s popular on rangefinder cameras, but also because most cell phone lenses produce a comparable aesthetic.

If you have a comparable conversation with a professional photographer, especially those who were still active during the golden days of analog photography, long focal lengths are in the foreground. So that we do not misunderstand none of these photographers were animal or sports photographers but active in the fashion or portrait field.

Low Depth of Field as a Creative Challenge

In general, photographic parlance, telephoto lenses are lenses with a longer focal length and smaller angle of view than a normal lens. They are usually used to magnify objects that are further away, similar to binoculars, and thus bring them closer. Another characteristic of the imaging properties of telephoto lenses is their shallow depth of field compared to lenses with shorter focal lengths. It can be used specifically to show only the actual photo subject in sharp focus, while objects closer to the camera or further in the background appear recognizably out of focus. This can be used for targeted composition but can also be sometimes disadvantageous when several objects at different camera distances have to be captured in sharp focus.

Not Because it is Easy, But Because it is Difficult

Telephoto lenses that are not too heavy are often not very fast and if they have a large aperture, they are very heavy and in freehand photography, camera shake often ruins an otherwise successful photo. Depending on the lighting conditions, this happens more often than one would like. The image looked sharp in the camera viewfinder – only in the laboratory magnification does the possible blur become mercilessly visible.

And there we have the challenge we were looking for at the beginning of this article. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy’s famous moon speech, we will choose telephoto lenses not because they are easy to use, but because they are hard to use.

And to make the whole thing really challenging, we’ll start right away in medium format. Interestingly, long telephoto focal lengths were very expensive on many medium format systems at the time of their appearance. These devices were built in small numbers sometimes only on direct order and mostly went to professional photographers who had to make money with them. Due to today’s low demand, however, these lenses can be bought today for surprisingly little money.

The Total Length is Shorter Than the Focal Length

Photo: Kamerastore, Tampere, Finland

Let’s start the series with a real tele monster. The Orestegor or Pentacon 5.6 / 500mm for the Pentacon Six 6X6 system.
For today’s creative medium format photographers this massive sample of telephoto glas is mainly recommended when it is purchased as an additional lens to achieve an extraordinary image effect through the pronounced telephoto effect. And believe me, this lens can really offer that in its purest form.
The lenses of the Praktisix system had an excellent reputation at the time, even the first German Oscar winner after the war Bernhard Grzimek used the Praktisix telephoto lenses for his photography of the African Serengeti wildlife.
Todays marketing specialists would call it a super tele. The 5,6/500mm was first presented at the Leipzig spring fair in 1965 and rounded off the Pentacon Six teleprogram at the top end. It used the same adapter as the company’s famous 300mm and was therefore explicitly designed for the medium format. The patent application indicates that special attention was paid to minimizing or even eliminating vignetting, which was necessary given the Orestegor’s primary design for 6×6 medium format. In spite of the unrivaled generous dimensions of the Praktisix bayonet at the time, careful construction work was necessary to design this lens.
All the major problems were solved in that the diverging lens of the positive system part (i.e. lens L II) representing a meniscus, the hollow side of which is inclined towards the front lens and which consists of a glass material with a respectable refractive index of 1.74. It is mainly thanks to the shape of this meniscus, made of what was high tech glass for the time, that a telephoto effect of 5.47 is achieved. To shorten the long and possibly incomprehensible technical explanations around this lens, the developers succeeded in developing a true telephoto lens where the overall length of the device was significantly shorter than the focal length.

From Orestegor to Prakticar

Photo: Kober GmbH, Graz, Austria

After all this shop talk, how do you use this lens in practice?

Well, first of all, these lenses are easy to find. The supply is large and the prices are relatively low. Here it should be noted that the lenses were mainly offered in 3 generations. The first generation ran under the name Orestegor 5.6/500. In the 1970s the obligatory renaming to Pentacon 5.6/500 took place and also a light change in the barrel design. Striking here the recessed grips and orange foot scale. In the second half of the 1970s, the most famous version with a cross-knurling of the meter ring followed. This was only replaced in the second half of the 1980s, when the lens was renamed Prakticar 5.6/500. The most important change, however, is the introduction of multi-layer coating.

My specimen is from the 2nd series and thus carries the Pentacon 5.6/500mm designation. If you are only used to standard focal lengths, you will be surprised how such a weighty lens feels.

It’s a Boy

Photo: The Orestegor 5.5/500 from 1968,
for Praktica, Pentacon, Praktika, and Exakta.
Interchangeable adapter for 24x36mm and for Praktisch 6 x 6 cm.

At first glance, this massive lens appears to be a not very practical device. In any case, it cannot be used hands-free by any means. But we have accepted the challenge and now we have to go through it, and I did not let myself be deterred by the weight. I managed to try it out in the wild for the first time.

Photo: Pentacon 5,6 / 500 for Pentacon six TL

An Extraordinary Portrait Shoot

The very first use happened in late autumn. The idea was a portrait shoot against the background of intense autumn leaves. I loaded a Cinestill 800T in my Pentacon Six TL and set the Minolta Spotmeter F to ISO 640. The whole thing was mounted on a sturdy Berlebach wooden tripod.

Charys on CineStill 800T taken with the Pentacon 5,6/500 mm.
Photo: Marwan El Mozayen

Everything was actually quite simple, a little disadvantage is the distance to the model and it is necessary to communicate a little louder and to gesticulate visibly, because the distances in a full-body shot are somewhat greater here, but it works. It is important to plan before setting up the tripod. Large format photographers know what I mean, but compared to this, with a little forethought, you can be very fast.

Everything is also a bit more sluggish than other lenses. On the other hand, the focus is not misadjusted so quickly by mistake.

Juliette on Kodak Portra 800 taken with the Pentacon 5,6/500 mm.
Photo: Marwan El Mozayen

The Working Aperture Has to Be Adjusted Manually

My Pentacon SIX TL has already been retrofitted by Pentacon with an extremely bright modern Rollei grid mat screen. This makes viewing the image an absolute pleasure.This might be different with an original less bright focus screen.

Already in the viewfinder image, the cropping of the portrait is significantly noticeable. Since the lens does not have an automatic aperture, it has to be stopped down manually to be able to focus more reliably in the viewfinder. Here, a prism viewfinder is clearly superior to the waist level viewfinder. The aperture can be preselected with a 2nd ring. Therefore, you should not forget to turn this ring to the stop after setting and before releasing the shutter.

Only Suitable for Medium Format

The following summer, the lens was used again due to the positive experience. The goal was to compare the Pentacon 500mm to the Hasselblad Carl Zeiss 500mm f8 Tele Tessar. This time under extremely bright ambient light. The Kodak Portra 800 was almost too sensitive, and a sharp stop down at 1/1000s was necessary. But these results also convinced me. How it compares to the 500 Hasselblad will be discussed in part 2. For me, however, it is certain that this lens belongs to my fixed repertoire and also creates new perspectives that have a charm of their own.

The Pentacon 500mm can be easily adapted to other medium format cameras with focal plane shutter thanks to the adapter system already provided at the factory. It is less suitable for 35mm, where it simply can’t show off its good features adapted to medium format and then becomes just mediocre due to the smaller 35mm format and all the disadvantages of the higher weight and the large overall length are then not worth the image results. This is why the digital APS-C faction often gives it bad reviews. Especially for high-quality long 35mm focal lengths, a completely new generation of fluorite lenses was developed in the 1970s, which the old Pentacon cannot compete with. But as far as the medium format is concerned, the user gets a wonderful lens that illuminates vignetting-free right into the corners and furthermore creates a wounderful image.

The first test shots turned out quite well in my opinion and helped out oft he creative hole. After this test I will surel use it for some editorial vintage shoots.

In the 2nd part we will take a look at Hasselblads 500mm lens and compare it to the Pentacon.

Note

This article was written by the SilvergrainClassics editorial team. It’s free for you.