Penti I & II. Pretty half frame.

[fidget]

Not much written about these on this forum.

I have to confess to a minor Ebay stupidity, I bid on this Penti1 when I saw that it was 35mm and had a manual 30mm lens! Only later did I research it a little and found that it is a half frame AND uses the rapid cassette system.

These features might have stopped me from bidding (and not knowing what a Rapid Cassette was- I had to ask here), but I was smitten.

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/data/500/Penti_1.jpg

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/data/500/Penti_1_back.jpg

It has fully manual controls for the aperture, shutter speed (only B,30th, 60th & 125th) and scale focus.

It works surprisingly well, even with only one of the two cassettes.
Apparently made by Welta circa 1960.

Anyone had experience with these?

[fidget]

This camera has a silky finish to its aluminium casing and no features that might allow the user to get a good grip of it. It's like handling a bar of wet soap, made to slip out of your hand!

[OlliL]

Can you show some pics?
I'm interested as these cost around 5-10 bucks around here.

[fidget]

These few are from the test roll that I ran off around my yard and out of my car one morning, so no great subject matter or composition.

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/data/500/Reservoir.jpg

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/data/500/yard14.jpg

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/data/500/yard23.jpg

I will post more after an outing with it in my bag.

They can be cheap, I just bought a II for less than the cost of the post.

Dave..

[OlliL]

Not bad at all!
Are the pictures portrait or landscape, when you hold it "the normal way"?

[fidget]

When held "normally", the frame is in portrait orientation.

I guess that these cameras are not much favoured because they lack the advantage of the use of standard cassettes, who wants to fight with a low capacity Rapid system?
I think that they look like something made for a glitzy handbag.

Thoroughly impractical, difficult to load and process, difficult to hold. Marvellous!

Dave..

[Joao]

...I guess that these cameras are not much favoured because they lack the advantage of the use of standard cassettes, who wants to fight with a low capacity Rapid system?
..

The capacity of the Rapid cassettes is bigger than it seems;I have improvised a "donor" cassette ( shortened central spool with the tip cut flat and the metal of the cassette body was shortened about 2mm) .
http://i627.photobucket.com/albums/tt360/foto_apparat/Rapid02.jpg
Some bulk film was loaded into this , and I've used it in the Penti with an empty original "receiver" Rapid cassette. With this system I have made up to 56 frames from the same roll.

[fidget]

I've recently gained a second cassette, but have yet to use it. So far, I have simply dropped a piece of film, cut to length and rolled up into the camera, in the dark. There is a cassette taking up the film. The winding (or in this case - the pushing) got noticeably harder as the film got past 20 frames. I think I managed around 28 before I gave it up.

I have some APX400s which is on a very thin base, I may try that for 36 ish frames.
Loading it will be much easier with the second cassette.

That's quite some work you did on the cassette!
Dave