The Venerable Venaret

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>Perhaps not the most attractive camera in my possession, but certainly one of the more unusual. It's the Vena Venaret.</p><div></div>

[rick_drawbridge]

<p><br />Produced in Amsterdam for a short period between 1948 and circa 1951, the Venaret concluded a mournful saga in the life of it's designer, Franz Kochmann. In Germany in the 1930's he had designed and produced the fine Reflex-Korell line of cameras, a design that this Venaret mirrors in a very diminished fashion. Being Jewish, his fortunes took a turn for the worse under the Nazi regime, his plant being confiscated and he and his family narrowly escaping the Holocaust. He survived the war years, and in 1948 he created the Venaret and began production in Amsterdam, but the camera with it's strange, basic and impractical configuration was not well-received and this, combined with a shortage of materials and expertise, resulted in the Vena Company closing it's doors some time in 1951.<br /><br />The Venaret is really a box camera, pure and simple. According to some sources, this is actually a "Venaret Junior", the true Venaret having the addition of an accessory shoe on the top plate. It takes 12 images on 120 film, frame spacing being achieved via a red window on the rear. The shutter is a simple guillotine affair, with speeds of 1/25th, 1/50th and B, while the lens is a 75mm f/7.7 doublet branded Vena-Amsterdam-Doublet. Apertures reductions to f/8, f/11 and f/16 can be selected via a sliding lever at the side of the fixed-focus lens. The shutter release is truly confrontational, with the lever at the side of the lens panel moving downwards a full 30mm before the user is rewarded with a substantial "click". On a couple of occasions I began to get dizzy from holding my breath as I struggled to achieve a steady exposure. The viewfinder provides some idea of the direction in which the camera is pointing, while an odd little catch on the top releases the back assembly for film loading.</p><div></div>

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>Rather mysteriously, this example shows quite a definite copper colour in the nickle-plated trim and also in the front plate. Just what alloy the camera is constructed from I'm unable to determine. On a pre-inspection of the interior prior to loading a film I detected a deterioration in a painted surface over which the film gets pulled, and took to it gently with some mild abrasive. The paint began to rub off, revealing a bright coppery metal beneath. All very strange. Anyway, I loaded a roll of Arista EDU Ultra 100 and took a series of images, all shot at 1/50th at f/11, given the somewhat limited choice. The results were pretty much as I'd expected; a couple were unusable due to camera shake, but there were mercifully no running scratches. Overall, it's the old doublet story of adequate middle sharpness progressing into a deterioration and vignetting in the corners, but I've certainly used worse box cameras. I'll post a few samples; development was in PMK Pyro with scans from an Epson V700 Photo using the Silverfast SE software.</p><div></div>

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>#2</p><div></div>

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>#3</p><div></div>

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>#4</p><div></div>

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>#5</p><div></div>

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>#6</p><div></div>

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>#7</p><div></div>

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>#8</p><div></div>

[John Farrell]

<p>Very nice, Rick - they have a lovely "antique" quality.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>And people spend money on "Lomo" Dianas and such when they could be shooting something as sweet as this one!</p>

<p>werkelijk groot!<br>

<em> </em><br>

<em>Kadlubek Kamera-Katalog</em> lists only 6 cameras from Vena, all simple box cameras. <br />The Veneret proper is listed as VEN0030, but two other models are cosmetic changes of that. <br />All are 1949-50 in origin.</p>

[steve_mareno1]

<p>It's certainly not a looker, you're right on that one. At least they solved the bellows pinhole problem in a definitive manner. The pics are sorta like the camera.<br /> I usually like oddball cameras, but this one is difficult to find affection for. You certainly dd the best you could w/ it, but that's about as good as it's gonna get it appears. Something like an Agfa Isola tube camera looks odd too, but those things take stellar photos, and are very compact w/ their snout collapsed.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Darn, I'm a bit offline for a while, only to come back and find this thread on a fellow-country-...camera. I guess the rather unusual style goes well with Amsterdam, it's not quite a normal city :-) The results have got something really pleasant of "days gone by", while certainly your skills will contribute, I'd like to think the lens has played its part too.</p>

[brett_rogers]

<p>That's a face only a mother could love! Thanks for sharing the images though, as always, <strong>Rick</strong>, I enjoyed seeing them.</p>