Rolleiflex - is this for real

mark

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Looks like it would be very difficult to use on the street
 

removed account4

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hey mark

i have a 33' I type 3a rolleicord i had modified so i could use with a motor drive ( like the one you linked to )
the "upgrade" was well worth the 900$ i paid ( they had to modify a more-modern rolleiflex mechanism to work
in my camera, and they had to modify the camera to work with the newer-winder ) ...
its pretty easy to use on the street ...
i have a small trailer i attach to my waist which has a small gas powered honda generator that i use to plug the winder into.
since i started to use this rolliecord to do street work i realized the shutter is too loud and people take notice of me.
i guess i have to have the shutter modified too ...

john
 
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cliveh

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John, I'm interested why you wanted this device. Is this a desire fore a short burst large format cine camera? If so, for what use?
 

removed account4

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hi clive

to be honest, i was joking
i find the idea of having a motor drive for a 12 frame roll of film
to be kind of funny .. i too am looking for the point !

sorry for the confusion
john
 

mark

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That was good john.
 

Michel Hardy-Vallée

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It's for real. We tend to forget that cameras were used in all sorts of context outside of our "photography" context (i.e. subject + camera + artist = work).

Before there were digits, all sorts of instruments needed to be photographed to keep a trace of their data. Oscilloscopes, for example (and there's a special Rollei+Polaroid thing for it), or microscopes, etc.

So the point of the Rolleimot is to have remote actioning of the camera, whether according to a given timing, or simply because one can't be at the same spot as the camera for the record.

Obviously, the market for this kind of tools eventually was taken away by more elegant solutions (hello, Hasselblad EL/M !), but I'm sure there were plenty of labs in the 70s that had standardized on the Rollei in the 50s because at that point it was the best tool they had. Converting their entire setup could have been too costly, so they would have bought the accessory motor.

That's the lesson of history: we may live in 2012, but we reflect the era in which we grew up much more than contemporary times.
 

Richard S. (rich815)

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railwayman3

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I can recall seeing references for some quite obscure and specialist accessories for the original Rolleiflex....as Michel Hardy-Vallee says above, they were used for a lot of purposes other than in more everyday contexts. There was a complete underwater housing for a Rollei, with outside controls for settings and winding on. I assume that you had to come out of the sea and dry the salt water off the unit every time you needed to change film. Wonder how many of those F & H made...
 

bsdunek

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I remember these from the 60's. They were used for scientific and engineering work where the camera had to be operated remotely. We had some at Ford.
 

Someonenameddavid

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graywolf said:
What makes you think it wasn't? Or at least there wasn't a version that was, I seem to recall that there was.
Click to expand...

Well from the estimation of clearances in the two pictures, but there should be no reason why such a rig couldn't be made.

David
 
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