Beltica 35mm Folding Camera

This is a Beltica 35mm Folding camera from Laubegast, Dresden, East Germany. First produced just after the war in 1946, it was initially called the Balda Baldina produced in what was in pre-war days the Balda-Werk factory in Dresden.

However the name was changed in 1951 to Beltica, due to legal trademark issues regarding the Balda name. It was built in the original Balda factory, but similar to the well known Zeiss Ikon trademark battle, where the East German Zeiss company had to drop the Zeiss Ikon name, the same thing happened with VEB Belca-Werk, who were forced to stop calling the camera a Balda.

So in 1951the Balda Baldina was re-named the Beltica. It was still very similar to the pre-war Balda Baldina, but I suppose the main give away that this was not a Baldina, was that the camera now had a Cludor shutter instead of the West German produced Compur. I think that the Cludor shutter was VEB Belca Werks own shutter design and was produced in house at Belca Werks factory in Dresden, though please correct me on this if I'm incorrect. There was another shutter option, called Balda-Dresden, but I have never actually seen one in the flesh.

The VEB Cludor shutter. Its a nice shutter and is still working 74 years after being made, though I suspect the slower speeds may be a tad slow!

This particular camera is fitted with a 50mm 2.9 Meritar Lens from the maker Ernst Ludwig of Lausa near Dresden and of course a more modern version of this lens was to find it's way onto many entry level Prakticas and Exas! The lens number is 793753

Also like the Prakticas and Exas, the 50mm E.Ludwig Meritar was also the entry level lens on the Beltica.

The other options were a Meyer-Optik Trioplan, and a Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar, again the same choices of lenses used on many Prakticas!

A nice touch on the Beltica is the viewfinder, which allows for parallax correction by turning a distance wheel below the finder, neat, take a look!

Now this is a really neat feature in my opinion, I really like the attention to detail VEB Belca-Werk put into this camera.

Another nice feature is the depth of field scale on the camera back, again attention to detail which while it maybe not strictly necessary, is another thing that takes it above the norm. It's a pity that the neat little pre-war frame counter did not carry on with the Beltica though, I rather liked that idea.

Inside the back of the camera looks really well finished, though I do find the back somewhat award to open, though this might be down to the passing of 70 odd years rather than the original design?

To me it looks so well put together and finished off.

I'm not sure if the Beltica was exported to Great Britain in any numbers unlike the West German folding Baldas. The focus scale on the lens is just in meters, as is distance scale on the viewfinder, whilst the depth of field scale on the back is in German and again just meters, so to me all of this adds up for it just being made for the G.D.R. market.

All in all this is a fantastic little 35mm folding camera, a great design, well made, good shutter, good choice of lenses, and so compact. There are still quite a few on German ebay so it looks like they sold well in their home market, not sure how this one got to these shores though. It will be interesting to see how it performs today, so I'll add it to my ever growing list of cameras to try out !

I hope you all enjoyed reading about this little known camera from the East, please feel free to comment and tell be what you think about it. I think it looks a little cracker and if you could get one with the Tessar lens option, then it might just well be a Retina beater at less than half the price ! Forget your Retina, get a Beltica, you know it makes sense! Now that should get some feedback at least.

What happened to Balda-Werk and Belca you make ask, well it looks like they carried on untill December 31st 1956, when they were 'absorbed' into the giant VEB Kamera-Werke Niedersedlitz.

Take care.

Philip