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Medium format SLR vs. TLR - IQ vs. Portability

Sirius Glass said:
Well one can walk down the street with a Hasselblad with the 80mm lens and carry the 50mm lens and a telephoto lens in a shoulder bag OR walk down the street with three Rolleis around one's neck. Do you really want to stick your neck out?
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A shoulder bag for 2 Rolleis is not necessary much larger than a shoulder bag for 2 Hassy lenses.... particularly if you decide to cram another back or two as well (as I usually do)
But I have to admit, 3 Rolleis around the the neck is as cool as it is crazy (is a positive way.) The day I meet someone with 3 Rolleis around the neck, I pay him/her dinner as a token of my utmost admiration.
 
Bormental said:
One can walk around the street with a Rollei in their hand OR walk down the street with nothing but an iPhone because all the lenses and backs were too much for one's neck
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Dunno about your parts of the world but here in Germany it seems that hanging a cell phone on a lanyard around one’s neck is becoming the next fashion trend...
 
etn said:
Dunno about your parts of the world but here in Germany it seems that hanging a cell phone on a lanyard around one’s neck is becoming the next fashion trend...
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Around here, most people walk around with the phone in their hands and eyes down looking at the screen, so that they walk into things. If you are lucky, they look up just a moment before they bump into YOU.
 
Sirius Glass said:
WLF allow stray light and dust to be introduced to the viewing screen. That and the damned left right reversal is why my WLF remains folded away in the camera bag.
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I love WLF s I had to shooting a RZ67 II for years, the prism finders for it weights more than a Hassleblad camera, back and normal lens.
 
Holding the TLR with WLF at just above my belly button, the taking lens is 4 feet (1 meter) above the ground, and with my head bent down looking at the GG about 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30 cm) away from my eyes. A nice comfortable composing distance for me.

When set up on a tripod, I might have the camera perhaps 6 inches (15 cm) higher. But I have held the camera over my head and put it on the ground or stump when needed. I've put it on the tripod with the self-timer set and held the tripod (fully extended but legs together) high above me. Whatever it takes!
 
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Three Rolleis around the neck is the ultimate bling.
 
I have done that, a Tele-Rolleiflex, 3,5 F and 3,5 E3, in the mountains about 25 years ago. I'm not doing it again.
 

The ULTIMATE in Retro "Bling".



cayenne
 


The Ashiflex was also waist level viewfinder
 
Soon after I got my Rolleichord in around 1980 I had an opportunity to buy a used Mamiya TLR and passed it off to a friend. The reason was a weight difference. 30 years later I got the opportunity to borrow a Hasselblad and got hooked.

The advantage of the Rolleichord being so much lighter is offset with the ability to change lens and backs with the 500C/M. If I was going to travel with the Hasselblad and only one lens and back I'd most likely take the Rolleichord instead. Going for low weight though my Holga is the lightest of them all however I can notice less quality in its images but not between the other two.
 
Having shot Hasselblads with the 80mm and a Rollei with the equivalent 80mm from Zeiss, there is 0 difference in image quality. As for the waist level finder I would always shoot with the magnifier. The only time I would just look down would be when using hyperfocal focusing stopped down.
 
personally, I prefer the WLF to the prism, but at the same time, I much prefer medium format SLRs over TLRs. For whatever reason, I find holding a camera in a vertical orientation, like you normally hold a TLR, significantly increases the chance that the image is crooked. For whatever reason more than 50% of the shots on the 30+ rolls I've run through my Yashica are crooked. Come to think of it, it might also be the square format that is harder for me to align. But, in the end, the Yashica sits on the shelf and the ETRSi or GS1 go out with their waist level finders. (I've even gotten moderately adept at framing portrait orientation with a WLF. Its not easy, but I rarely want to shoot portrait. I'm also more successful getting the image straight than I am with my Yashica.)
 

Get a viewing screen with vertical and horizontal lines and that problem will go away. If necessary add your own marks.
 
I traveled for year with a Mamiya 6 and 50mm lens, which is useful for most applications. I also travel with a Hasselblad SWC which is very compact and useful for everything short of safaris and birds.
 
Sirius Glass said:
Get a viewing screen with vertical and horizontal lines and that problem will go away. If necessary add your own marks.
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That Yashica has both horizontal and vertical lines on the focusing screen--no avail. Maybe I'm holding it wrong, but it feels like it is the act of pressing the shutter button crooks the camera a bit.
 
abruzzi said:
That Yashica has both horizontal and vertical lines on the focusing screen--no avail. Maybe I'm holding it wrong, but it feels like it is the act of pressing the shutter button crooks the camera a bit.
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Can you adjust your approach in a way that results in you squeezing the release - preferably in the same direction as the lens axis - rather than pushing it.
My Mamiya cameras have a release that makes this easy. A grip with a cable release can also do that.
 

+1 Slowly squeeze the release.
 
Bubble level. Get a small 2 axis level and clip it into the cold shoe. Interestingly, in Ansel Adam's The Camera ("Holding the camera"), he mentions a relatively common vision issue that can cause you to unconsciously tilt the camera.
 
I also have a problem with crooked images on my TLR. But I recently replaced my Lubitel (extremely hard to focus) with a Yashica LM. Haven't tried the Yashica out yet but I hope my shots don't turn out crooked - no grid. Seeing the focusing screen is much easier though. Also interestingly there is no cable release socket, only shutter button. My model also has a frame counter reset button, which was supposed to have been phased out by the time the Yashica LM was released. I wonder if mine is an earlier model.
 
The notion of lens "image quality" is such a can of worms. Often people mean by this lens resolution, but there are a number of other factors that may be said to impact image quality. I just read a review, which I can't seem to find now, where someone compared two vintage Rolleiflexes, a Mamiya 7 and more recent Blad. He was surprised how good was the resolution and contrast of the Rollei with f/ 2.8 lens even though single coated. It was a bit better than the Blad and second to the Mamiya 7. The better Rollieflex lenses often have some high numbers on various published resolution tests. Some SLR's have a focal plane shutter and all have a mirror, both of which cause vibrations that can degrade image quality. Is bokeh a part of image quality? If so, I think that the 80 mm and 105 mm lenses for Mamiya C get high marks. How does film format enter into this? Some SLR's have a bigger 6 x 7 or larger format which can record more detail or may require less cropping to fit into rectangular aspect ratios.
 

http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Yashica_6×6_TLR_(knob_advance)#Yashica_LM

If your camera looks like this, around the base of the shutter button there is a knurled ring (if the ring hasn't been lost). Unscrew this ring, and you can thread on a cable release that has "Nikon F" or "Leica" style threads - it has a large end that screws onto the shutter button surround, not into the button. There are inexpensive adapters from this thread to normal small cable release threads.
 
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