|
|
Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 4, 2007 0:02:34 GMT -5
I was looking through the online auctions & stumbled across a Welta Belmira. At first I thought it was Medium Format, but the 50mm Zeiss Jena lens suggested otherwise.  The Belmira immediately puts me in mind of the Werra. OK, the Werra is still the cleaner design, but the Belmira almost looks like a step along the design evolution that produced the Werra, and it is, I understand, an older camera. Is that a left mounted rangefinder? perfect for me (I'm 'left eyed'). Doing some browsing about Welta, I 'discovered' the Penti, I know it's a weird agfa Rapid Cassette half-frame but it still must rate as an uber clean design, and one which the nineties camera designers raided shamelessly! corsopolaris.net/supercameras/half/penti.jpgI'm sure if you toted a Penti today, your friends would assume that you'd finely smelled the coffee and bought a funky wee digital. My respect for Dresden designers has increased immensely. |
|
|
|
Post by Michael Fraley on Aug 4, 2007 1:26:20 GMT -5
Thanks Michael for the unusual Welta Belmira -- left-mounted indeed.. And the Penti is a very deco design. I'll show it to my daughter, she likes that period of industrial design.
|
|
|
|
Post by skyraider on Aug 14, 2007 6:47:52 GMT -5
I have a Welta belmira. Got it a few years ago on eBay (the seller was Fred Sherfy).
This camera is like new and takes great photos.
|
|
|
|
Post by paulatukcamera on Aug 30, 2007 1:48:22 GMT -5
Coincidence this camera gets its first mention here while I was away!
I had never heard of it either, so bought a catalogue on German eBay to read about it this month. Obviously nobody else had either, as I was the only bidder!
Another one I'll have to add to the collection!
Paul
|
|
|
|
Post by nikkortorokkor on Jan 21, 2008 21:21:04 GMT -5
update,
another Belmira (mistakenly advertised as a belwira -the cursive script fools people) is up for auction here in NZ.
Coincadentally, my Weltaflex TLR arrived this morning. I was going to email the seller to ask where his grandfather (the original owner) bought it, but didn't need to. Stuck in the back cover was a local camera dealer's decal, dated 1967. So Welta obviosly had a local agent.
Nice that these solid, cleanly designed East German cameras made it all the way to the South Pacific. I bet they made lots of 'sixties Camera Club members very happy.
I wonder if any of their wonderful folding TLRs made it this far south?
|
|
PeterW
Lifetime Member
Member has Passed
Posts: 3,804
|
Post by PeterW on Jan 22, 2008 10:03:58 GMT -5
They aren't really kising cousins though there is an external passing similarity. The Werra was made by Carl Zeiss in Jena but the Belmira was originally made about 1950 by Belca-Werk in Dresden. However, by 1960 it seems to have taken the Welta name, possibly around the time that the VEBs were being formed and later combined. Welta Kamera-Werke in Freital became VEB Welta-Werke. Whether the later models were still being made by Belca in Dresden or by Welta in Freital I don't know.
Similar confusion (which leads on to the Weltaflex) exists about the Reflekta, a fairly basic TLR with a pressed-steel body and generally not up to Welta's usual standards of design and build. This was originally made in the 1930s by Kamerawerk Tharandt in Freital when the name was Reflecta, with a c. To make things more confusing, It was designed by Ferdinand Merkel in Freital, but before the camera went into production his company went bancrupt in the 1929/30 depression and was taken over by C. Richter who was, in fact, a lady, Charlotte Richter.
She and her husband Fritz seem to have renamed the Merkel company Kamerawerk Tharandt and made the Reflecta until 1939 when the factory stopped making cameras and turned to armaments of some sort. In 1946 the Richters moved to Western Germany to set up another camera factory.
Back in Freital, Kamerawerk Tharandt continued the Reflekta, now spelled with a k, until the mid 1950s when the name seems to have moved to Welta. East German camera names can be awfully confusing. I have a Reflecta, with a c, made in the 1930s. Some people think it's an the ancestor of the Weltaflex, though I don't. The Weltaflex was much better built.
I haven't handled one of Welta's folding TLRs so I can't comment on their quality, but certainly Welta built some excellent quality folders in the 1930s. Freital, btw, isn't all that far from Dresden - still in the same camera-making region. Several smaller camera makers, and a couple of shutter makers, had their factories there.
PeterW
|
|
