How do you mount a flashgun onto the Pentacon Six?

The easiest – although not the best! – way is to fit the viewfinder eyecup with incorporated flash shoe onto the prism:

This accessory also fits the Pentacon Six non-metering prism, although it will not mount on the Exakta 66 TTL prism, which is fractionally taller, nor even on the slightly smaller Exakta 66 non-metering prism for the same reason.
 
 

However, there is a separate (slightly higher) accessory shoe available for the two Exakta 66 prisms. Instead of using the two “big ears” of the standard Pentacon Six viewfinder accessories, it has a fine thread that screws into the eyepiece on either of the Exakta 66 prisms – or even on the two Pentacon Six prisms. [C372-20A: The Exakta 66 accessory shoe] This shoe does have on its rear face the “big ears” socket to receive further Pentacon Six / Exakta 66 accessories.

[C372_AccShoe.jpg]

[C372-21A]

When the accessory shoe is mounted on the Exakta 66 metering prism, access to the push button that turns the meter on (indicated by the red arrow) is difficult, but possible, especially from the left-hand side of the shoe. No doubt the designers thought that people using the bracket to mount a flashgun would not need to use the camera’s light meter on most such occasions.

Here is the Pentacon Six with a flashgun mounted on its own the accessory shoe:
 

[C312-35A:  You can just see the end of the flash cable in the locking socket, below the lens on the left.]

The location of the flash socket and the size of the camera mean that the cable on most small flashguns will be too short, and you will need an extension lead – you can see the join between the flashgun cable and the extension lead in the picture on the left.

However, for most purposes this is about the worst place to put your flashgun, unless it has a tilt or swivel head to enable you to bounce the flash off a convenient nearby neutral-coloured ceiling, wall or other surface.  Direct flash from a position so close to the lens will give you virtually no modelling, and the infamous red-eye.

[C372-24A] With a convenient white ceiling bounce flash can give excellent results. This gun also has a small fill-in secondary flash to reduce the shadows.

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© TRA April 2002, November 2005