Old Product Before The Internet: Rolleiflex

Rolleiflex img
Top View of the camera

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Reviews

picture by ROLLEIFLEX

I won’t be in the twilight years of my life leafing through commercial headshots, strangers’ weddings or annual reports. I’ll be reliving memories from my daughter’s childhood, our family travel. Friends and relatives no longer with us. The many happy years of our marriage. Everything else is just noise.

picture by ROLLEIFLEX All in all… it is a really well built 127 format film camera and as the name “Automatic Rolleiflex 4×4” suggests, it produces 4x4cm frames (the so-called Superslide format). If you do decide to try one it would be good to budget for a CLA, the shutter on mine was sticking at slower speeds when I got it. Plus also, if you don’t wany to fiddle with slitting your own 127 and using your old backing paper, the film is still out there, but pricey and the pickings are slim.

picture by ROLLEIFLEX I have owned and sold a fair number of these cameras during the last 40 years, and every time I let them go I am left with This year I got to purchase a nice example of a 60’s-built Rolleiflex 3.5E with a 75 mm 3.5f lens and a busted light meter ,just a minor niggle since I own two hand-held meters. I think that I will never cease owning and using these magnificent TLRs as long as I live. Shooting square format is quite challenging, but I always took forward to the challenge with a Rolleiflex in hand.

picture by ROLLEIFLEX My Rolleiflex 2.8C indeed looks, feels and performs like one of history’s most iconic cameras, with one of the most revered lenses. If, like me, you take a visceral delight in the feel, sound and performance of exquisitely made equipment, if you revel in the quirks of a figuring out a nearly 70-year-old manual camera, and if you just flat-out think it’s the coolest goddamn thing you’ve ever seen in your life, I couldn’t recommend it more. I love this camera in a way I love few other inanimate objects. I got a pretty good deal on mine—$300 purchase price, $140 for some touch-up repair—so keep tracking your preferred online marketplaces. You might luck out like I did.