I messed up the development of this film completely, so this is more something like a camera review. Plus a Black Sabbath bootleg album cover collection. Picture quality is not indicative of camera performance 🙂
Shot with a 1937-ish Welta Weltini.
But goddamn this camera is weird. I got mine very cheap in non-working condition, but got it working relatively easily – the half-silvered prism in the rangefinder is still not-at-all-silvered so the rangefinder doesn’t work. But that’s the least of its problems. The big thing is that it’s impossible to hold. The door is opening to the left, but the shutter release is also on the left. So that’s where one would hold it, but then the door is in the way. So you have to take the (considerable) weight of the thing into your right hand, but that hand also needs to do the focusing. And the viewfinder is on the right, but now your hand is in the way. I don’t know, this thing is not designed for humans. The film advance knob is on the bottom left, which is like the absolute worst place for it. And somehow it’s turning in exactly the wrong direction. It’s a marvel of science.
In the great German tradition of over-engineering, there’s also a lot overly-clever interlocks, but that I find quite fun. The way to take a picture is to press the shutter release, which then locks. Hope you remembered to cock the shutter before because you only get that one try. Then press the film advance unlock button (not aware of any other camera that has that separately), then wind on the film advance knob until that locks (but only if there’s film inside), which unlocks the shutter release again. Then cock the shutter. Then you’re ready for the second picture. Don’t close it now though because it can’t close when the shutter is cocked (as that would be too convenient).
Now it looks neat and it’s well made and the lens is great and it’s pretty small and the name is fun and I want to love it but …it’s not for me. But if you have more than four hands but really small ones, do try one out.
Leave a Reply