INTRODUCTION

The Welta Penti II is a half-frame format, SL film camera made in West Germany by VEB Kinowerke between 1961 and 1977.

BEST SUITED FOR:

Lomography

Fun!

PERSONAL NOTES

The Welta Penti II is a fun camera, mine is gold color. It uses SL film, which is regular 35mm film in a special canister that looks and feels the same as the Agfa Rapid caniters. It produces half frame images, vertical images of 18mm by 24mm. The Penti II has a meter, but good luck finding one that still work. Anyways, you have full manual controls. It has scale focussing, so take your time to compose, focus, and expose correctly using the aperture and speed of your choice.

The special thing about this camera design is the advance system. When you press the shutter, the frame is taken, then a special plunger suddenly appears on the left side. You just have to press on it to advance the film and re-cock the shutter. Fun!

The other thing making it difficult to use the camer is its film : it uses SL film, and none is still available, so you have to load it yourself. Also, the length of the film that you load will surely run longer then what the camera is expecting, so near the end of the film roll, you are not sure if you are still shooting blanks or not.

It's fun to use once or twice, the experience of shooting with it is nice, but after few rolls of film, there are too many hassles, and it becomes a display piece.

CONCLUSION

The Welta Penti is really cute and fun, but it's difficult to load its film, I do not recommend it, unless you want a display piece.

PHOTO SAMPLES

VERDICT:

3 FLASHBULBS