Werra Night Shots

This past week has been all about the Werra. Apart from going to work all I have been doing is testing and researching this great little camera, It's becoming a little bit of an obsession. I had to work back late on Wednesday, so on the way home I decided to test the Werra at night. I think the shots are pretty poor but this is not due to the camera but the operator. I took a few shots on the bus and then got off and walked across the Story Bridge. Somehow I achieved a double exposure of the walk way and rivets, have no clue how I did it? I walked down Brunswick street and took some shots of the infamous laundromat. I met my girl friend at the IGA and took a shot of her selecting yogurt, exciting stuff. The images are in the order in which they were taken.

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More Test Shots

These test shots turned out very grainy. Like I said earlier I have no idea what I'm doing but I think due to the 400 film and over-exposing some of my shots this created more grain then desired. The image of the door had a finer grain and was taken in the late evening with the same settings I used during the day. Possibly I could go to a 200 film and play with the exposure in the next run and see if I get a finer grain. Lots and lots of fun, I think the next adventure will be testing colour night shots.

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Werra Test Shots

I recently bought an early model Werra camera. Not sure what model this one is but it is definitely the simplest looking in design, which was the main reason I bought it. Looking at the camera house, there's only the shutter button. All other features have been moved to less-visible parts of the camera. A simple and stunning looking camera.

It was purchased online from Bulgaria so my expectations were very low but to my surprise It was in amazing condition for a 50 year old camera. Lens was very clean and all functions seemed to work fine. I bought some ILFORD professional 400 black & white film and had a day roaming the city taking photo's. I had never used a film camera before so I had no idea what I was doing and learned a lot from this first role of film. Overall I was very impressed, here are some of the better pictures taken from that first roll;

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Werra History

After the Second World War, Carl Zeiss was divided into a West German and an East German division. The East German division, Carl Zeiss Jena, lost a lot of personnel to the Russians, who deported them to create cameras for the Motherland. When they slowly started trickling back in the early 1950's, Zeiss Jena didn't have an immediate use for their expertise. They realized however that it would be a tremendous loss to the company and the country if their experience went to waste, so they gave them a project of their own: the Werra cameras. Manufactured in the Ernst Abbe Werk of Eisfeld, they were named after the river that runs near that town.

The main idea behind the whole Werra series, its unique selling point, was the rapid film advance ring. This ring, which is the big carpeted ring near the body, cocks the shutter, and advances the film and the frame counter all in one twist. A very rapid, very sure, very smooth twist.

Despite good sales, the Werra series was discontinued in 1966 after Carl Zeiss Jena was assimilated by VEB Pentacon in 1964. Pentacon's director Siegfried Böhm felt that a highly specialised company like Zeiss should stick to its core business (optics) and abandon its simple viewfinder cameras (Dutch camera magazine March/April 1997).


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