Welta Weltix 35mm self erecting folding camera for 36 exposures on 135 film. Welta Kamera-Werke were based in Freital Germany and made photographic equipment from 1914. They were quick to recognize the merits of the 35mm Kodak 135 cassette and produced a camera, the Welta Welti, in a similar layout to the first Kodak Retina first introduced in 1934. The Welti arrived promptly in 1935 and was developed becoming progressively more expensive. In 1939 Welta introduced a cut price version known as the Weltix, the subject of this page. Despite the so called cut price it was well made and equipped with a Compur shutter and a choice two good lenses, a f/3.5 Xenar or f/2.9 Cassar. The overall appearance was very similar to the first Welti, including the black enamel finish to the top housing. Main body construction consisted of two pressed steel trays held together by a mixture if rivets, screws and spot welds, hinged to the back that was a single pressed steel tray. The front hatch was a similarly pressed steel tray hinged to the body and rigidly supported by two chrome plated spring powered struts. The bellows are natural leather and collapse into a pressed steel box spot welded to the main body shell. All the exposed bodywork is black enamel painted and covered in thin natural leather. The exception being the inside of the front hatch which was black crackle finish. Apart from the struts, the remaining bright work was nickle plated presumably to cut costs. Despite this they went to the expense of having the Compur shutter front plate branded. The viewfinder of this example has a button that allows the assembly to spring out a bit as a form of parallax correction when using the camera for close views.

The town of Freital is just South West of Dresden and fell into Russian occupied territory post WW2, Welta eventually becoming part of VEB Pentacon in East Germany.

This particular camera was first seen by the Living Image back in 1987 being bought by a friend of ours. The shutter button was missing which I pointed out and it vanished for several decades. The next time I saw it was when it was donated by Claire Saunders in 2025 in memory of her brother Stephen. The first thing we did was create a new shutter button, turned from brass and appropriately nickle plated, then weathered a bit. It then had the shutter and lens elements cleaned in October 2025.

View other viewfinder cameras in this collection.