[C436-36] The Novoflex bellows, on the right, next to the bellows
produced by Pentacon
The Novoflex Bellows Unit
for the Pentacon Six
The highly-regarded firm of Novoflex, located in what was at the time West Germany, made its bellows available with the Pentacon Six mount.
[C436-36] The Novoflex bellows, on the right, next to the bellows
produced by Pentacon
This smart unit has an integrated focussing slide. The lens mount
at the front and the camera mount at the back can be exchanged for other
mounts, facilitating the use of Pentacon Six lenses on other cameras and
lenses with other mounts on the Pentacon Six – naturally for macro work
only.
| The Novoflex bellows on the Pentacon Six, using the 80mm Biometar lens,
metering prism and angle finder, which with its dioptre correction and
extra magnification facilitates accurate focussing, which is always particularly
difficult to achieve in macro work with any camera and lens.
[C436-33] |
 |
 |
The bellows unit made by Pentacon has a lever – seen at 8 o’clock in
the top photograph – that presses on the lens aperture pin, to maintain
the aperture at maximum, which is really essential for focussing in macro
work – especially as a very small aperture is usually desirable to increase
depth of field as far as possible.
As explained on the Pentacon bellows page, here, a double cable release automatically stops down the lens just before the shutter fires. There is no such aperture pin lever with the Novoflex bellows, making
the use of the Pentacon aperture control ring (also illustrated on the
Pentacon bellows page) highly desirable. Naturally, this increases
the minimum extension of the bellows.
The double cable release that came with the Novoflex bellows is also of West German design. It works well, but has a long rigid end section that screws into the aperture control tube. This section fouls the aperture ring on the 80mm Biometar, making installing the cable release and changing the aperture difficult. [C436-34] |
Slide copying
One of the great plusses of the Novoflex bellows is the slide copying
attachment that Novoflex made for it. This magnificent accessory
makes the copying of Medium Format (or smaller) slides easy.
[C436-27] |
[C436-26] |
[C436-29] The supplementary bellows attach to the slide copier
and the front of the lens,
ensuring that no light can enter and degrade the image.
| The observant among you may have noticed the name “Hasselblad” on the slide copier. This outfit, here supplied with the Pentacon Six mount, was at the time of manufacture the best in existence for Medium Format macro work and slide copying. |
[C436-32] |
Novoflex bellows for the Pentacon Six are hard to find and usually fetch a very high price. A newer version than the unit illustrated here has bright blue knobs but in other respects appears identical (from photographs of it that I have seen).
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© TRA August 2007