Reflekta Reflections - a Travelled TLR

[John Seaman]

The Reflekta was made around 1950 by VEB Welta-Kamera-Werk. My somewhat basic version has a ROW Pololyt f3.5 75mm coated triplet lens, in a GW Blitz I everset two blade leaf shutter with speeds of 1/100, 1/50, 1/25 and B. Film advance is by red window with no double exposure prevention. There is a flash socket but no self timer. There is no magnifier in the viewing hood, and no sports finder. Yes, it is pretty basic but perfectly usable.

The seller said he could not move the focusing lever under the lens. Google soon told me that it's a common problem with these, due to dried out grease. Sure enough when it came, the lever was very stiff but just about movable. There are internet descriptions of the major tear town needed to clean and re-lube to rectify this. Hmm, perhaps there's another way.

With the focus racked out, it's just possible to see the start of the focus helix through the gap at the bottom of the lens. I sprayed a little lubricant on to this, fortunately it didn't get on the shutter. And it came a bit looser. And looking through the back, a few threads of the helix are visible (arrowed in picture).  I worked in a couple of drops of light oil. Now the focus is smooth and pleasantly light. But please, resort my crude methods at your own risk!

A worse problem was the mirror, or what was left of it. The hood is removed via six screws, four at the sides, two at the back (the two front screws just secure the nameplate and don't need removing). The silvered 50mm square mirror was obviously FUBAR.

Now a while back I took out  the front aluminised mirror from an old instant camera. I've never had much success cutting glass, but with a little care and a lot of luck, I cut the new mirror to size and slotted it in - it's almost exactly the same thickness as the old one so focus is OK. Now the view is as bright as it gets with a plain ground glass screen.

The Reflekta yielded one small surprise, it has travelled!. The retailers label in the body was tiny and the only way I could read it was to use a macro lens. It reads:
Tall's Camera Supply, 1409 FIFTH AVENUE, SEATTLE, WASH.

That's it, thanks for looking. Please don't expect pictures from this camera, I'm just not doing film photography nowadays.

Edited April 25 by John Seaman