East German cameras

[orejano]

Some Werras are rangefinders;others are not. Some have a Compur shutter, and others an East German Prestor. Russian focal plane rangefinders and SLR's with a lift, turn and drop into place shutter speed dial and East German SLR's of that type are prone to shutter breakage if the speed is changed and the camera laid to rest thus. The tension must be relieved by firing the shutter after any speed change. This has happened to Prakticas and Exaktas, Zorkis and Feds and even a Praktica with metal vertical travel shutter. I imagine it also explains the problems with the shutter of the Kodak Ektra. Of the East German SLR's, those with a Praktina-type shutter (identifiable by the speed selector-also present on some Exas) do not present this problem and are the best choice, albeit, due to the breech-lock mount, harder to find lenses for. The ones without an instant-return mirror (regardless of brand) may also, due to carelessness, have pinholes in the inner curtain. The lenses, particularly the Jena ones, are an excellent buy and are easily found in Exakta and P42 mounts. I personally find Exas much easier to use than Exaktas, but others may view things differently. Not all East German goods were bad.

 

[Dave Colangelo]

I have one of the old Russian range finders (FED 2 style) I think I paid $20 for it at a flea market. They are neat little cameras made to imitate the Leica III ish era stuff. As mentioned the build quality is the issue. Its not that its poorly made its just a bit different than the other stuff. Material quality is eh at best and you can tell. There is a lot more stamp metal parts where the Leica and Blad's of the world were precision milling stuff. Where other cameras have ratchets and spring loaded stops it has smooth operating things. The Iris can be set to any position for example which is kinda neat but a bit frustrating if you want to lock it into place. Reliability is less than optimal but I cant say I have had a ton of issues with it, FWIW its a pretty simple machine. The soft focus qualities are neat and it can yield some really cool photos but I just cant trust it like i can trust my nikon FT.

On top of everything they just made a lot of them. Supply has far far out weighted demand in this case.

Regards
Dave

 

[compur]

Nowadays any old film camera from any country that you come across might or might not be fully working regardless of what it originally cost or where it was made. And that includes the big names from Japan and West Germany. So, I don't think you can categorize reliability by country of manufacture anymore or even by brand.