Tele-Rollei(flex) is back

[Roger Hicks]

I reckon that learning to load a Hasselblad magazine was one of the more useful tthings I learnt at Art School. A12s are easy compared to the old 12on type!



Richard

As we used to say in Bermuda in the '60s:

Dat de truf

Cheers,

R.

 

[Christiaan Phleger]

Whaaa! Roger, you're too funny! Boring, Made Well! LOL!
As for a Trabant, I don't see them at all so I guess they're a little 'exotic'.
I guess these days the 'quality' of most beginning assistants is quite a bit lower, it takes a few minutes to explain that a Leica doesn't actually Need batteries to work...

 

[George Papantoniou]

Some Leicas do.

The A12 is not hard to load. It takes a day or two for a beginner to learn how to load it correctly and a week to do it fast. Hassies don't jam in experienced hands. The 6008 can help you work faster, although not that much.

I've been working with Hasselblads for the last 13 years and with 6008s in the school where I was teaching. My Hassies have gone under stress that could destroy the 6008 and have suffered little or no damage. I dropped a 40mm Zeiss Distagon on concrete from a height of almost 1 meter and I only had to cock the shutter (with the help of a screwdriver) to make it work again (if the shutter is not cokced the lens will not fit on the camera).

 

[Christiaan Phleger]

Yeah, but that was probably due to the fact that it was A Zeiss Lens. I've had Hassy's jam if you looked at them funny..:rolleyes:

 

[tony lockerbie]

Funny, I've heard nothing at all about new Rolleis here in Oz and I buy all the mags. Re releasing the Tele in this day and age is quite amazing and gratifying.
Rolleis are like Leicas, something special....they are just better, thats all. They just beg to be used, even the 'Cords.
Roger, maybe we'll se a test of the new Tele in Black and White Photo from Frances in the near future?
Cheers, Tony

 

[Roger Hicks]

Roger, maybe we'll se a test of the new Tele in Black and White Photo from Frances in the near future?
Cheers, Tony

God willing. She gets on better with TLRs than I do, so it'll probably be a joint test in Shutterbug as well. Not the very near future, though. First we need to prise the camera out of Rollei: already promised, but who knows who else is in the waiting list? Then actually shooting with it; then write it up; then magazine lead times...

We'll try and get a review up on www.rogerandfrances.com before the magazines, but for obvious reasons reviews are subscriber-only (or can be bought individually). If they weren't, the magazines would get really pissy.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

As for a Trabant, I don't see them at all so I guess they're a little 'exotic'....

Not so much 'exotic' as 'God-awful'. They were popular in Eastern Europe (especially East Germany) when they were just about all you could get. But I remember driving to Berlin just after reunification and there were Trabbis lying in the ditches by the side of the road, looking small and pitiful like road-kill hedgehogs or armadillos with their little legs in the air. A lot were thrown away in the first few years; the survivors now command quite high prices and there are owners' clubs.

Cheers,

Roger

 

[sanderx1]

Not so much 'exotic' as 'God-awful'. They were popular in Eastern Europe (especially East Germany) when they were just about all you could get. But I remember driving to Berlin just after reunification and there were Trabbis lying in the ditches by the side of the road, looking small and pitiful like road-kill hedgehogs or armadillos with their little legs in the air. A lot were thrown away in the first few years; the survivors now command quite high prices and there are owners' clubs.

Cheers,

Roger

I don't think they were popular - simply all most east germans had any hope of getting, ever.

 

[benjiboy]

I'm sure It's a very good camera, but I wonder how much market research the company has done before manufacturing them, because at the very high price they will undoubtably be in todays market and the specialized nature of their use, I may be wrong but I can't see them selling many, or making them for long since the market is flooded with high quality M/F SLR cameras and lenses at bargain prices.
I hope I'm wrong, but I just can't see the rational of marketing a product like this at this time.

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

I'm sure It's a very good camera, but I wonder how much market research the company has done before manufacturing them, because at the very high price they will undoubtably be in todays market and the specialized nature of their use, I may be wrong but I can't see them selling many, or making them for long since the market is flooded with high quality M/F SLR cameras and lenses at bargain prices.
I hope I'm wrong, but I just can't see the rational of marketing a product like this at this time.

I think they must have realized that the huge sums people were willing to pay on the auction sites for these cameras would feel more comfortable in their pockets than in other people's.

Leica reorganized their branding image toward gear fondler and collectors, so I think F&H are doing the same. I'm no marketing/business expert so I can't really think much further. But it sends a positive message: film is cool, sophisticated, and you can flaunt your use of it to gain social credit, and perhaps chicks (like that Blow-up guy!).

Besides, doesn't it feel awesome to say "new film camera" !?

 

[HerrBremerhaven]

Seems that Leica and Franke & Heidecke are doing what many Swiss watch companies did many years ago. Obviously there are technically better or more accurate modern devices, but there will remain people interested in mechanical precision and fine manufacturing.

If either company tried to take on Sony, Matsushita, Nikon, Samsung, or Canon, I think they would be doomed to failure from the start. To be a market success, one can find a niche and carefully exploit it. Check out the new advertising campaign for Leica; it is not about the cameras, it is about how a person would use these cameras.

When you tie a product into a lifestyle or niche choice, then it just needs to attract the right customers. I agree that on the surface it looks like poorly thought out or stupid marketing and product development, wasted resources, etc. However, if you look at these products from these two companies as a limited or controlled volume niche product, they might appear to be well done marketing and development, though time and their limited sales will tell if that works.

These things show the value of design and branding. They are beyond products that are simply a means to an end. Just like bottled water and Swiss watches, the value is in the design and brand awareness.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
Dead Link Removed

 

[SoulSurround]

Some pictures F&H sent me

For the fans; here are some pictures that I got from Dietmar Kanzer from F&H. I am quite interested in this camera, because the lens' MTF looks like a true portait one. My only doubt (besides the price) would be the 1.5meter minimum focussing distance. Does anybody know whether a rolleinar exists for the bay IV mount? And whether that is an option... or will it "destroy" the actual lenses' performance in a noticable way?

 

[Fotohuis]

Shall we share the costs Jeroen? One week it's mine, the other week you can use it.....

I will never bring a brochure from the Photokina for you again.

groetjes, best regards,

Robert

 

[SoulSurround]

Shall we share the costs Jeroen? One week it's mine, the other week you can use it.....

I didn't know you were interested in the camera too ;-).

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Seems that Leica and Franke & Heidecke are doing what many Swiss watch companies did many years ago. Obviously there are technically better or more accurate modern devices, but there will remain people interested in mechanical precision and fine manufacturing.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes about photography:

"Strangely, the only thing that I tolerate, that I like, that is familiar to me, when I am photographed, is the sound of the camera. For me, the Photographer's organ is not his eye (which terrifies me) but his finger: what is linked to the trigger of the lens, to the metallic shifting of shutterblades. I love these mechanical sounds in an almost voluptuous way, as if, in the Photograph, they were the very thing -- and the only thing -- to which my desire clings, their abrupt click breaking through the mortiferous layer of the Pose. For me the noise of Time is not sad: I love bells, clocks, watches -- and I recall that at first photographic implements were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing, and perhaps in me someone very old still hears in the photographic mechanism the living sound of the wood." -- Roland Barthes

 

[zenrhino]

And maybe a Rollei TLR is a top-of-the-line Range Rover: enormously strong, but big and chunky. I'll believe that if you do get along with them well, they're faster to use than Hasselblads, though.

That would make a Seagull a Kia (or a Yugo!) and a Holga a Schwinn.