|
Post by nikkortorokkor on Feb 25, 2008 0:30:31 GMT -5
I've mixed feelings about this 'un. Big, heavy & with 'system' pretensions -removable hood/screen and back(!?!)- the Weltaflex nevertheless feels somewhat tinny and awkward, with a pressed steel chassis and that strange shutter release masquerading as a motorcyce foot brake that looks better than it works. The whole thing just feels less fitted than the only other TLRs I've owned: Yashi 124G & 44 and Meopta Flexaret. The Ludwig Meritar lens seems not to have set the photographic world on fire either. Still, it's a handsome beastie and I'm tempted to give it a whirl with some film sometime soon. Anyone with experience of the Weltaflex? BTW, I was intrigued to discover that Ludwig were based in Lausa, near Dresden. This seems to close to the notorious Tomioka Tri-Lausar for coincidence, especially given that according to Camerapedia, some prewar Ludwigs were marked 'Ludwig, Lausa, Dresden'. Did Tomioka name their lens after a Dresden suburb as a way of gaining some Teutonic cachet or was there a more significant tie up? P.S. the rust spots came for free.
|
|
PeterW
Lifetime Member
Member has Passed
Posts: 3,804
|
Post by PeterW on Feb 25, 2008 14:04:18 GMT -5
Hi Michael, Dealing with your questions in reverse order:
When a German company is referred to as XYS Dresden, it often means that the factory was in the admistrative area of Dresden which is quite large and takes in quite a few outlying towns
The optical company of Ernst Ludwig was founded in the town of Lausa, a few kilometres to the north east of Dresden city. Lausa was incorporated into the nearby town of Weisdorf in 1938. Hence pre-1938 Ludwig lenses were often labelled E. Ludwig Lausa. Later ones were usually E. Ludwig Dresden. I haven't heard of any labelled E. Ludwig Weisdorf, but that doesn't mean there weren't any.
I had the impression that the Tri-Lausar lenses were Japanese (?? Tamioka; later part of Kyocera ??) but my knowledge of Japanese lenses is sketchy at best. Lausar (with an R at the end) is quite widely used as a town name in the far east, and I don't think any connection with Lausa in Germany was intended or implied.
Welta cameras were made by an old-established camera company in Freital, also near Dresden. Before the war the company made some very nice compact folding cameras such as the Weltini, Weltur and so on, some 35mm and some 6x6. They were broadly modelled on the folding Retina shape, and though they were never quite Retina quality they are still nice cameras to handle.
After the war Welta was never the same. When the Rusians moved in they had a policy of stripping machine tools, jigs and fixtures from factories which had, in the opinion of the local military commander, been directed to produce 'armaments'. How much was taken seems to have depended on the knowlege of the military commander or his technical officers and their definition of 'armaments'. Sometimes they were selective and left basic machines such as lathes and milling machines, just taking the specialist machines, machine tools and jigging, but in other cases they took everything to be on the safe side. How much was taken from Welta I don't know. What was taken was shipped back to Russia in case it was of use to Russian military or industry.
Welta was back in camera production by about 1947 and continued to make updated versions some of the pre-war folders, but these weren't quite the same quality. They suffered from shortages of material, decent chromium plating and lack of skilled staff.
Moving on to TLRs, there was a very basic and cheap TLR called the Reflecta made before the war by C. Richter (C. for Charlotte) in Tharandt, also a town near Dresden. Charlotte Richter had some family ties to the management of Welta, and when she and her husband moved to western Germany in 1945 Welta took over the Reflecta but renamed it Reflekta, with a K.
Then around 1954-55 Welta decided to make a better TLR which was the Weltaflex. I haven't owned one, but I have handled a couple. As you say, they seem to be quite well specified, apart from the Meritar lens which was very much a 'basic entry' triplet often fitted to Exas and various other cameras. But lack of the old Welta ideas of quality showed in the pressed steel main components (brass was almost a precious metal in east German industry at this time), the general cheap finish and the somewhat 'cheap' feel of the controls. Even so, I believe they were fairly reliable and, with the Meritar stopped down, they were capable of producing some good pictures. The sylised logo of the Ernneman Tower on the lens mount of your indicates a late model made after Welta was incorporated into Pentacon VEB. The 1 in a triangle means, usually, that the camera was inspected and passed for export - rather like the Japanese oval gold sticker.
Welta also made a TLR in the mid 1930s called the Perfekta. It was an unusual design, like an upright rollfilm 6x9 with the top part extended backwards to carry the focusing screen. Normal lenses were a Xenar or Tessar in a Compur shutter.
There was also the Peerflekta in the mid 1950s with a Pololyt lens made by Laack in Rathenow, a suburb of Berlin.
I've seen only pictures of these two cameras, so I know very little about them.
Hope this helps.
PeterW
|
|
|
Post by nikkortorokkor on Feb 25, 2008 16:49:39 GMT -5
Thanks for some hole filling, Peter. It is a nice coincidence between Lausa and Lausar. I have an uncle who taught Japanese for many years, so I must run Lausar by him. It is certainly not too far from the Chinese Lao Shi (teacher). I was struck by the fact that both the Tri-Lausar and Ludwig Meritar were both very much entry level lenses, though I understand that Tamioka's original pre war Lausar was a Tessar type, which never gained widespread popularity due to it's cost being too close to that of imported German lenses. You are pefectly correct in your suggestion that my Weltaflex is a late one. A little sticker inside the back from the Camera Service Center (a Christchurch camera shop owned by German migrant, Theo Loeffen) has 6-6-67 hand written on it. Looking at the few pictures of Weltaflexes I've seen, the little tower logo seems to turn up on those with the 1 to 250 and B Vebur shutter, while the 1 to 300 and B Prontor carries the familiar Prontor shutter blade logo. This leads me to guess (& I'm only guessing) that the Vebur shutter turns up on later rather than earlier Weltaflexes. IMHO, by 1967 the Weltaflex was starting to look rather Eastern Bloc. On paper it has better specs than the Yashica-44, but in terms of style, feel & fit, the wee Yashi has it over the aging Welta.
|
|
PeterW
Lifetime Member
Member has Passed
Posts: 3,804
|
Post by PeterW on Feb 26, 2008 20:26:42 GMT -5
Michael,
I looked to see if I'd got any notes about who made the Vebur shutter, but I haven't.
I've heard, however, that it was modelled on the Prontor and made in the east German Balda factory after this became part of Pentacon VEB. Most post-war Balda cameras were made by the 'new' Balda company in west Germany - yet another migrant to the west.
I believe it was quite a reliable shutter, and fitted to a number of east German cameras including the Werra. The one on a Werra I had certainly worked OK.
PeterW
|
|
|
Post by nikkortorokkor on Feb 27, 2008 15:20:19 GMT -5
Peter, I notice that the lovely Welta Belmira (a camera I covet for its 'left eye' fiendly rangefinder) also uses the Vebur shutter, but this time wrapped around a rather nice CZJ 50/2.8 Tessar.
Mine was dozy on the slow settings, but after a little squirt of white spirits, perked right back up again.
My biggest gripe remains the shutter release. That lovely big lever is fine in principle, but my scientific test rig (an ancient set of pocket fishing scales) tells me that it requires just over 2lb (1 kilo) of pressure 'at the trigger' to release the shutter. In my experience, both with cameras and rifles, this is just too high, and the muscular tension required to shoot a picture results in the camera leaping perceptably every time. I'd hazard a guess that I wouldn't be able to hand-hold the Weltaflex at speeds under 1/100. A shame because it negates some of the advantages of a big, heavy TLR.
I thought about tearing the camera down to try and fettle the shutter release, but is it really worth it for a Meritar lens?
I think that all you lucky Rollie owners got the Mercedes 250 SL while I got the Trabant.
|
|
Andrew
Lifetime Member
Posts: 243
|
Post by Andrew on Apr 15, 2008 22:26:42 GMT -5
Welta cameras were made by an old-established camera company in Freital, also near Dresden. Before the war the company made some very nice compact folding cameras such as the Weltini, Weltur and so on, some 35mm and some 6x6. They were broadly modelled on the folding Retina shape, and though they were never quite Retina quality they are still nice cameras to handle. After the war Welta was never the same. When the Rusians moved in they had a policy of stripping machine tools, jigs and fixtures from factories which had, in the opinion of the local military commander, been directed to produce 'armaments'. How much was taken seems to have depended on the knowlege of the military commander or his technical officers and their definition of 'armaments'. Sometimes they were selective and left basic machines such as lathes and milling machines, just taking the specialist machines, machine tools and jigging, but in other cases they took everything to be on the safe side. How much was taken from Welta I don't know. What was taken was shipped back to Russia in case it was of use to Russian military or industry. Welta was back in camera production by about 1947 and continued to make updated versions some of the pre-war folders, but these weren't quite the same quality. They suffered from shortages of material, decent chromium plating and lack of skilled staff. Moving on to TLRs, there was a very basic and cheap TLR called the Reflecta made before the war by C. Richter (C. for Charlotte) in Tharandt, also a town near Dresden. Charlotte Richter had some family ties to the management of Welta, and when she and her husband moved to western Germany in 1945 Welta took over the Reflecta but renamed it Reflekta, with a K. Then around 1954-55 Welta decided to make a better TLR which was the Weltaflex. I haven't owned one, but I have handled a couple. As you say, they seem to be quite well specified, apart from the Meritar lens which was very much a 'basic entry' triplet often fitted to Exas and various other cameras. But lack of the old Welta ideas of quality showed in the pressed steel main components (brass was almost a precious metal in east German industry at this time), the general cheap finish and the somewhat 'cheap' feel of the controls. Even so, I believe they were fairly reliable and, with the Meritar stopped down, they were capable of producing some good pictures. The sylised logo of the Ernneman Tower on the lens mount of your indicates a late model made after Welta was incorporated into Pentacon VEB. The 1 in a triangle means, usually, that the camera was inspected and passed for export - rather like the Japanese oval gold sticker. Welta also made a TLR in the mid 1930s called the Perfekta. It was an unusual design, like an upright rollfilm 6x9 with the top part extended backwards to carry the focusing screen. Normal lenses were a Xenar or Tessar in a Compur shutter. There was also the Peerflekta in the mid 1950s with a Pololyt lens made by Laack in Rathenow, a suburb of Berlin. I've seen only pictures of these two cameras, so I know very little about them. Hope this helps. PeterW Hello to all...i happened across this post, and in doing so this forum quite by accident but a very pleasent one. i too collect a number of vinatage cameras including the Welta so i of course found this interesting. if you dont mind me being a little controversial ;-) Peter i will respectfully disagree on the quality of the of welta not being up to a retina. as i hold both in my hand there are a couple of things one has over the other but the quality is definately no less and in some aspects i feel the Welta (Weltini) is better. also its focusing returns to infinity automaticaly upon closing as oposed to having to do it manually first on the retina. IMO only the 35mm welta's and more particularly the Weltini w/rangefinder is often considered based on the retina. i think this can be argued (perhaps inspired! or simply had to offer a 35mm for the market) as well and could be considered based on a development between a helical focusing Welta Gucki or Pearl and the 120 film format Weltur. the first Weltini is, apart from the helical focusing a miniture version of the larger format Weltur and the Weltini II is a beautifull little camera updated from the first. The 6x4,5 and 6x6 and 6x9 Weltur are definiately developments from Welta's earlier camera's the Solida and the Pearl, and is a brilliant camera. again it returns to infinity upon closing, a coupled rangefinder using one window, quality lens offerings, solid and compact. it is one of my favourite from that era in that type of camera. i agree Welta was not quite the same after the war- i real shame! i find all that history fasinating as you wrote it and i have heard a simular version about Charlotte (a female head of the camera company in those days must have been rare). i would be very interested on your source and if you know of any books that might have history of Welta etc. i have been trying to collect information on Welta for some time and for me it is slow and difficult proccess. just to clarify Peter the 1930's Welta Perfekta is a folding '6x6' TLR. i think the camera you are thinking of is the Welta Superfekta which is TLR 6x9. i have both and the superfekta is a very different camera! the back rotates for landscape and masks move in the waist level finder as well
|
|
PeterW
Lifetime Member
Member has Passed
Posts: 3,804
|
Post by PeterW on Apr 16, 2008 17:11:14 GMT -5
Hi, Weltur. Welcome to the group, and thanks for the info on folding Weltas. BTW, most of us are on first name terms here.
I have very little more information on Charlotte Richter. As you say, a lady heading a camera company before the war must be pretty rare, especially in the eastern part of Germany which had a reputation for being very male-dominated.
All I have is that Charlotte and her husband Fritz bought Camera-Werke Merkel in Tharandt in 1932 when the owner Ferdinand Merkel went bankrupt. There was a third partner, Friedrich Schmittchen, but no-one seems to know anything about him. Maybe he was a sleeping partner who provided some of the finance.
They renamed the company Kamera-Werk C. Richter and started production with a fairly basic and cheap TLR called the Reflecta which Merkel had designed but never put into production.
After the war, when most of the factory's machinery was taken by the Russians, the Richters moved to Barntrup in West Germany in 1946 and founded another camera company Lipca-Lippische Camerafabrik Richter & Fischer. Again I have no idea what part Fischer had - possibly similar to that of Schmittchen before the war.
Back in Tharandt the company was renamed Reflecta-Kamera-Werke Tharandt and carried on with the Reflecta TLR but now spelled the name Reflekta with a k. In 1948 the company name was changed to Kamera-Werk Tharandt, and in 1950 it was nationalised as part of VEB Welta-Kamera-Werke. That's about all my notes on Charlotte Richter tell me, though I might possibly have more info somewhere on Welta and the VEB/VEB Kombinat set-up in the 1950s.
European - mainly German - cameras and camera history up to about 1955 or so is my main photographic collecting interest, and for me the people that founded the factories and those who designed the cameras are almost as fascinating as the cameras themselves.
Most of my information comes from reading books and magazines, and talking with many friends over the past 20 or so years who are fellow collectors in the UK, and more lately with friends in various parts of the world via the internet, emails and generally browsing. It is nearly all on handwritten notes in notebooks - typed on a computer and printed out when I get the chance - and filed, well loosely collected - in binders and folders. Not very well organised I'm afraid but I usually manage to find what I'm looking for eventually.
Unfortunately I have been very lax in the past and didn't note the sources of much of my information particularly when it came from late night/early morning natters with camera collecting friends or conversations at camera fairs and local area meetings of the Photographic Collector's Club of Great Britain. Sometimes I didn't write up my notes for several days, so memory may have been a little forgetful at times. I guess I just don't have the museum curator type of tidy-filing mind.
At many of these chats and general natterings I have been fortunate to be able to handle many cameras I have never owned, nor indeed am likely to own. My impressions of the quality of those cameras is what I remember from handling them.
At each level of build quality, from mass produced snapshot cameras to the top, judging between two makes is largely subjective unless you have had them apart for repair or refurbishing and can judge the internals.
I don't own any pre-war Weltas, but as I remember handling them the build quality and general feel was very good but not, at least in my opinion, quite as high as the early Retinas. The automatic return to infinity was a nice feature, but I have heard a couple of collectors say that it sometimes gave trouble when it was older and slightly worn, or could be bent by careless handling.
Some of the later post-war Retinas went sadly downhill in build quality as, indeed did most of the post-war Weltas. There really wasn't a lot of excuse for the last few years of the Retinas, but in the case of the Weltas the post-war fall off in quality was, I feel, largely due to the shortage of skilled labour in East Germany together with the shortage of top quality materials and inefficient State management.
PeterW
|
|
PeterW
Lifetime Member
Member has Passed
Posts: 3,804
|
Post by PeterW on Apr 18, 2008 14:03:07 GMT -5
Hi Andrew,
I think Merkel was another casualty of the general political and economic situation in Germany in the 1920s coupled with two major depressions.
I've no intention here of going into depth about German political and economic history of the 1920s, about which many books have been written but, VERY briefly:
The Weimar republic formed at the end of World War I was, at best, an uneasy political coalition and in 1922 it lost control of the economy. Hyperinflation on a scale hitherto unknown hit Germany. For example, in 1919 the rate of exchange of the Mark against the US Dollar was 8.9 to 1. By mid 1921 it was 76.7 to 1, by January 1922 191.8 to 1 and in November 1923 reached the meaningless ratio of 4.2 trillion to 1!! Importing became impossible. German money was virtually worthless. Unemployment increased alarmingly.
At the end of 1923 the German government managed to regain reasonable control of the economy helped by short term loans to German industry by German banks, via loans from US bankers. Even so, many German firms went under.
Those that survived were again hit very hard in 1929 when, because of the Wall Stret crash, US bankers recalled the loans to meet debts and losses at home. German banks were also forced to recall loans. Some camera firms managed to struggle on, but Merkel may well have been one of the casualties. Product quality wasn't the major factor in staying afloat. Capital reserves and assetts counted for more. This time unemployment also got out of control with nearly a third of the workforce unable to find a job.
Had it not been for the financial and economic strength and foresight of the Zeiss Stiftung (Zeiss Foundation) in forming Zeiss Ikon in 1926 other great names in the German camera industry might well have followed.
But that's another story. As are the problems of the East German camera industry after World War II first with assets stripped by Russia in the form of reparations followed by the formation and, as it transpired, mismanagement of the VEBs (VEB = Volkseigener Betrieb, or public enterprise - in other words State controlled industry) in East Germany after World War II, and the disastrous handling of privatisation by the Treuhandanstalt, or Treuhand agency, appointed by the East German government just before German reunification in 1990.
As they say, it's all a loooong story!
PeterW
|
|
Andrew
Lifetime Member
Posts: 243
|
Post by Andrew on Apr 18, 2008 17:43:49 GMT -5
thats brilliant Peter! thanks for sharing that insight. i dont think i have ever heard it explained in such a way and it makes it a lot clearer and easier for me to picture how events evolved and came about. it really is mind boggling to imagine the difficulties and pressure the people and their companies must have been under.
a long story for sure but very interesting and i look forward to hearing more one day about Ziess...
the inflation Germany experianced back then must of been simular to what they experienced toward the end of war (WW2) years.
i have a friend in Germany, although not a photographer or collecter himself, helps me collect cameras by sometimes paying for them on my behalf, translating for me and storing them before he sends them to me here in Oz. however he doesn't speak English easily and is only in his 20's, but he was recounting to me about the vaule of the ReichMark and that they are in coin collecting shops but are worth next to nothing even now. and that apparently German folk toward the end of the war were carrying home their weekly wage in washing baskets it was worth so little. bank notes were stamped with red ink showing the new vaule of the note; for example 1000RM became 1000millionRM. he told me this because i was in trying to get an idea of what some cameras were worth in our currency or how that relates to what they would cost now. in relation to cameras that are pictured in some German catalogues i have with prices in RM dating from the early to late 30's
|
|