Pentacon K16

135compact.com 16mm film ultra compact cameras Pentacon K16

The Pentacon K 16 was first released 1979 by the East German camera and optics maker Pentacon. It was meant as an eastern counterpart to the 110 cartridge cameras in the West. It has a special cartrige for mid-film perforated 16mm film, made by the East German film maker Orwo. Production ended in 1989 with the end of the German Democratic Republic and the cartridge film* (see below) ended soon afterwards. It has a decent, yet fixed focus lens and a choice of speeds.

* 16mm film is a movie film format, as was 35mm film. In the early days it was cut from 35mm film and thus had perforations on one side (single perforation). Please note, that the perfs and their area of 35mm are bigger than those of modern 16mm film. As soon as 1923 Kodak introduced a set with camera, projector, tripod, screen and splicer (or was it a slitter?) aiming at amateurs. The new format was rapidly adopted by still camera producers to build smaller devices. The film usualy sits in a cartridge, but no standard has been established, many have 2 cassettes, one feeding and one taking. So every maker made his own system. Some, like Minolta, even sold a choice of readily available film cassettes. If you want to use this camera, you should at least have one cassette and mid perforated film. To my knowledge this doesn't existanx more. So this camera is definitely obsolete.

The camera's main features are:

27mm F8 coated lens, min. focus ~1.5m
Shutter speeds B, 1/30-1/250s, fixed aperture F8
13x17mm picture format, Kassette 16
Size 135x57x30, Weight 250 gr.
Hot shoe, tripod socket, film counter

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Camera and case.

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The camera is mid size and has no cover to open. The lens is protecte by a filter.

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Camera top. Counter window, speed selector with weather sybols as guideline and shutter button with cable release socket.

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Back view. Finder and back opening button (dial).

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Hot shoe.

Seen from below. Tripod socket, film advance slider.

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Camera film compartment open. You can see the film advance hook in the middle of the film plane.

It must have been a decent point and shoot camera with quite good picture quality and a nice finish. This camera feels solid. As there is no film for it, I could not test it. So no picture results were possible. If ever I come across a Kassette 16, I will try to work around the mid perforation advance.

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