The wildly weird Welmy Wide

[tunalegs]

I took a chance on a broken Welmy Wide on ebay for 75 cents. I was the only bidder so the camera showed up on my doorstep after a few days. Focus and aperture ring frozen, fungus in the lens, blurry viewfinder.

Several things I found interesting:

1. The camera is not that small. I was expecting a pretty tiny camera given its 35mm lens and lack of a rangefinder or other mechanical complications.
2. The lens appears to be a retrofocus design despite still having a short register. There are four elements, the back three appear to be a normal triplet the large front element I assume to be of negative power but it is so thin I cannot tell. It could conceivably be an ernostar type as well.
3. The camera displays the shutter speeds on the front of the body and on a dial visible through the top plate. When I took the front of the camera off to clean the viewfinder I was amused to see the top dial is connected to the shutter speed ring by a tiny pull chain. Cute.

The Welmy Wide appeared on the tail end of the Japanese fad for wide angle fixed lens cameras and obviously was aiming for the low end of the market. They do not seem too common today, and I was unable to find any photos online taken with one (save for two very tiny jpegs on a Japanese blog). Has anybody had experience with this camera? I'd be interested in seeing the results.