We all have our weak-spots as photography enthusiasts. I certainly have a weak spot for the lovely Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar lens. I will not in any way claim that I am even close to a lens and optics expert, but this lens, with its four elements in three groups, gives a sharpness and tone to the images I just love. I had one of these lenses for my M42 cameras, but this lens would benefit from some servicing as the aperture blades keeps jamming when stopping down further than f8, and the focusing ring is very heavy to operate.
A little while back, I read about a little rangefinder camera from East Germany that was said to be magnificent value for money and deliver splendid image quality and sharpness. The camera was called «Welta Belmira» and was, believe it or not, equipped with a lovely Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 50mm f2,8 lens. I started looking for one of these cameras to try out, and it was not difficult to find them. However, they were often in very varying condition and it was clear that getting the right and good one would take a while. And so sure it did, but after some months of searching and looking, I found one in decent condition. Yes, it was a bit dusty, and yes it had a dim rangefinder, but the camera in itself seemed to work really well.
I went out to a location where there is a lovely artistic installation close to the lake, and I have thought for a while to experiment with some photography around this location. The origin of this artwork is unknown to me, but it is only accessible in the winter and spring time, as it will be submerged by the lake most of the summer time.
I also with this outing, made my first test of the Adox Atomal 49 developer. I read a bit about it online and saw some images developed in it, and I got curious to try it out myself. Atomal 49 is a very fine grain developer that gives you full film speed unlike Perceptol that will eat some of your speed. For that reason alone, I bought a 5L package of it and decided to give it a try. And based on these results with Tri-X at 35mm, I am very happy with what it looks like. This might well become a developer of preference to me, but I will obviously have to make more tests before deciding.
Back to the camera. I really enjoyed using the camera. It has a very special and differently engineered slider instead of the usual advance lever. It is a bit fiddly to use and has a tendency to stick at different points, but it works faultlessly. The dim rangefinder is not really an issue as long as you have an external one, and the focus ring seems to be pretty much accurate. However, I believe the camera «drags» the shutter speeds a little bit, but slight overexposure is not any issue with any negative film really.
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