C41
Kodak Gold 200
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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The Werra Microbi is a half-frame 35mm camera produced by VEB Carl Zeiss Jena in Jena, East Germany, around 1962. It is a variant of the established Werra compact-camera family, adapted to the half-frame format (18x24 mm exposures on standard 35mm film) to double the number of frames per roll. As a half-frame camera it belongs to a distinct niche: cameras designed to economise on film by producing two portrait-orientation frames per standard 35mm frame, a format that was commercially popular in Japan during the 1960s but less common in European production.
Reference
Recommended film stocks for the half-frame-35mm format your camera takes.
C41
Kodak Gold 200 is a daylight-balanced C-41 color negative film with warm color, moderate grain, and a classic consumer-film look.
View profile →C41
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.
View profile →BW
Develop half-frame-35mm film
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Before you buy used
About this camera
A rare half-frame variant of the East German Werra line, built by VEB Carl Zeiss Jena around 1962.
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Format | Half-frame 35mm (18x24 mm) |
| Mount | Fixed lens |
| Years | ~1962 |
| Shutter | Leaf: ~1/30s - 1/250s + B |
| Meter | Selenium (uncoupled), no battery required |
| Exposure | Manual |
| Viewfinder | Optical direct-vision |
| Focus | Fixed (zone) |
| Battery | None required |
The Werra camera line was produced by VEB Carl Zeiss Jena from the mid-1950s. The series took its name from the Werra river in Thuringia and was notable for its unconventional cylindrical design, devised by industrial designer Karl Clauss Dietel. Standard Werra models in the range included the Werra 1 (basic, no meter), Werra 3 (with selenium meter), Werra IV (with rangefinder), and Werra Mat (with coupled exposure automation).
The Microbi appeared as a half-frame offshoot around 1962, at a time when the half-frame format was experiencing international interest following the success of Olympus Pen cameras in Japan. VEB Carl Zeiss Jena's motivation appears to have been film economy: East Germany had limited foreign-currency hard currency for film imports, making a camera that stretched a 36-exposure roll to 72 frames economically attractive for the domestic market.
The Microbi is considerably rarer than the mainline Werra variants and appears infrequently on the used market outside Germany. Its production run appears to have been short, and surviving examples are prized by Werra collectors.
The Werra Microbi is significant as one of the very few Eastern European half-frame cameras produced during the 1960s, a format otherwise dominated by Japanese manufacturers (Olympus, Canon, Ricoh, Yashica). Its rarity makes it a collector's item today rather than a practical shooter, though a working example is fully usable: the selenium meter requires no battery, the fixed-focus lens handles zone shooting adequately, and half-frame doubles the yield from any roll.
For historians of East German photographic industry, the Microbi illustrates VEB Carl Zeiss Jena's willingness to experiment with format variants even under planned-economy constraints - a characteristic also visible in the diversity of the standard Werra line itself.
Ilford HP5 Plus is a flexible ISO 400 black-and-white film with classic grain and strong push-processing tolerance.
C41
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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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 Microbi
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