C41
Kodak Portra 400
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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The Werra 1 (1954) is a 35mm viewfinder camera produced by VEB Carl Zeiss Jena in Jena, East Germany. It is the founding model of the Werra series, one of the most visually distinctive camera lines of the postwar era. The Werra's design breaks radically from convention: the body is covered in a deep olive-green felt rather than leatherette, the top deck is bare of controls, and shutter cocking is integrated into a rotating collar around the lens barrel -- eliminating the separate cocking lever found on virtually every other 35mm camera of the period.
Reference
Recommended film stocks for the 35mm format your camera takes.
C41
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
View profile →C41
Kodak Gold 200 is a daylight-balanced C-41 color negative film with warm color, moderate grain, and a classic consumer-film look.
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Kodak UltraMax 400 is a versatile consumer-grade ISO 400 daylight-balanced color negative film with T-grain emulsion, delivering warm Kodak colors, fine-for-speed grain (PGI 46), and wide exposure latitude. Currently in production and available globally as a single-roll and multi-pack.
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Before you buy used
About this camera
East Germany's most distinctive postwar compact -- a felt-wrapped cylinder of Carl Zeiss Jena glass with a revolutionary rotary shutter cocking collar.
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Format | 35mm (24x36 mm) |
| Lens | Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 50/2.8 (~Novonar 50/3.5 on some examples) |
| Mount | Fixed |
| Year introduced | 1954 |
| Shutter | Leaf: 1s - 1/250s + B |
| Meter | None |
| Exposure | Manual |
| Viewfinder | Optical, no rangefinder |
| Focus | Zone (distance scale) |
| Battery | Not required |
Carl Zeiss Jena developed the Werra series as an export product for Western markets as well as domestic East German sale. The name "Werra" comes from the Werra river in Thuringia, continuing the tradition of naming Zeiss cameras after German rivers (cf. Ikonta, Contessa). The first Werra appeared at photographic trade shows in 1954 and entered commercial production shortly after.
The distinctive felt covering -- unusual for any mass-produced camera -- was a deliberate aesthetic choice, giving the camera a soft, tactile surface radically unlike the hard leatherette of its contemporaries. The olive-green colour became the Werra's visual signature, though later variants also appeared in black and brown.
The Werra line evolved over the following decade: the Werra 3 (1958) added a selenium exposure meter; the Werra 5 added a coupled rangefinder; later models such as the Werramat introduced further refinements. The Werra 1 remained the entry-level unmetered model throughout the series run.
The Werra 1 is significant as a piece of industrial design as much as a photographic instrument. In an era when most cameras were rectangular metal boxes covered in textured leatherette, the Werra's felt-covered rounded body and control-free top deck were genuinely radical. The rotary-collar shutter cocking mechanism anticipates the kind of integrated, minimal control layout that would become fashionable decades later.
For practical photography, the Tessar 50/2.8 is an excellent lens -- the classic four-element design that Carl Zeiss had been refining since 1902 -- delivering sharp, clean images across a wide aperture range. The camera's zone-focus operation demands some skill from the photographer but poses no practical obstacle in good light with moderate apertures.
C41
Kodak ColorPlus 200 is an affordable, consumer-oriented daylight-balanced color negative film at ISO 200. Known for warm, slightly muted color rendition, fine grain, and wide exposure latitude, it is currently in production and widely available in Asia and select global markets.
View profile →BW
Kodak Tri-X 400 is a classic black-and-white film known for strong tonality, visible grain, and documentary character.
View profile →VEB Carl Zeiss Jena Werra 1
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