Welta's
Welta's
i'll keep my fingers crossed that i can get a mirror suited to another TLR that will fit.
I must admit i am fasinated by the Welta company and the cameras they made, the history,the quality, workmanship, design, mechanics, the solid feel they have and I think they were ahead of their time in many respects...i think its shame the war came along for this company and for photographers as who knows what they may have produced if they weren't led down the FED path. at any rate i like collecting them, they arnt over popular amongst camera collectors. and although its interesting, warming and not uncommon to come across people like yourself on this site that collect them and know about them, generaly people down at my end of the world havnt even heard of them so its sort of my own little niche
I have way too many cameras, more than i can use really. it seems i cant resist some of them and sometimes think i should take up fishing as a hobby as collecting shiny lures cant be as expensive as cameras LOL. i started with a 6x6 Weltur (in Weltas that is) which is an amazing camera for its day and still an easy to use camera with a host of features, then a 6x9, Then one thing led to another and i found an origonal Welta catalogue from 1939 and have been trying to collect each of them from that ever since. i'm still missing a couple of the low end models that go pretty cheaply (symbol and trio) but thats the difficulty for me here in Australia, as most of these are in germany and those folk often dont use Pay Pal and i cant internationly bank tranfer small sums of foriegn currency. i am still waiting on a Perfekta to arrive, i think it must be comming by sailing ship as its been months already!
amonst my favourites (at the moment at least) and cameras i use regularly are my wooden Thornton Pickard plate cameras (rarely use these! but they are my fav) my Welturs 6x6 & 6x9, Bessa II's w/scopar and heliar, perkeo's, super isolette/speedex, my Super Ikonta C wich is mint/almost new and i marvel at its odd steam engine appearance, just love using it although compared to some other cameras its far more awkward to use,,anyway the are too many to list.
i like that Mamiya of yours i didnt even know of that one, i find it interesting as i have have been considering a mamya 7ii for ease of use and the 6x7 format which enlarges to standard size pictures without cropping. but that model of yours is VERY versitile from what little i have seen! i like system cameras to as i used to use a blad for years and are still acustomed to that sort of thing (which is one reason i like the Suoer Isolette as it uses the EV system... so much of the time i dont use a light meter).