TLR Users

Picking up Dennis's point about meters, my first serious camera was a Zenit E, the built on Selenium meter was fine once you realised how to use it. I also use an M3 Leica with Leicameter.

So when I use the meter on my Yashica I'm fully aware of bright open skies etc, you learn to tilt down, swivel around, or meter off your hand, but it's instinctive and accurate.

Ian

Matt
I bought it from a local camera shop he has a few mainly 1&2. You can get them on evil bay £10-20 or so like this:
Roleinar on evilbay
Thanks for your comments Dennis, the shot of my daughter was just a snap really a test. I have a set of #2 coming this week-end so I look forward to trying that out too.
I would like to know about 'stacking Rolleinars' I know Sanders does it a fair bit; does a #1&2 together equal a 3? how does the parallax work?
So many questions....
Also I'm not sure my little blog has enough power to push up the price of Rolleinars, but i think every TLR owner should have one set at least.
Mark

Hi,

Thanks Mark, I'll have a look.

Thanks

Matt

p.s. had a good look at your blog, really interesting, especially the B&W scanning and developing articles.

I agree with you, Mark. I find the Rolleinars (or other companies' equivalents) eliminate one of the main drawbacks to using TLRs, namely the lack of close focus. Optical quality is great. Now if I could find a Rolleinar 1 for Bay III....

Now for the other (more expensive) problem.

With my GS-1, I always have the option of changing lenses for situations where my feet simply will not get me where I need for the composition I have in mind. With my Nikon 35mm, I have a couple of fairly reasonable zooms that greatly increase the flexibility of my composition.

Barring the prohibitively expensive Mutar, there is virtually no way of changing the focal length of my Rollei's lens. I say "virtually" because I have actually seen an adapter to connect a Rollei to a set of binoculars... Kind of fitting for the TLR concept.

Apart from this, the only way to "zoom" with a Rollei is to take advantage of the outstanding resolving power of its lens and to shoot with the intent to crop... or to accept that there are some things this most wonderful of cameras cannot do.

Cheers,
Tom

[EDIT] I just did an ebay search on Mutars:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Rollei-B-II-Rol...goryZ297QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Current price US $1,026.00

http://cgi.ebay.com/Rollei-B-III-Ro...goryZ297QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Current price US $1,026.00

Are they NUTS?

Tom the Mutars are interesting but I too am put off them by price.
Why not buy a Tele and wide Rollei? I've seen them for less than $1k
All in all the way I see it for subjects that need zooms I'm not taking my Rollei, although some here probably use C300 coupled with 55mm 80mm and 135mm.
Actually I realised I don't have a zoom for any of my film cameras...
Mark

Mark, if you can find a Rolleiwide for under $1,000, grab it.
I own two Tele Rolleiflexes as well as a wide-angle Mutar.
Nearly all the squares in my flickr stream were shot with
a Tele Rolleiflex. The Mutar gets a lot less work, but I have
a photo taken with it in my APUG portfolio. (Links below.)
I rarely see a Tele trade for under $1,000, and have never
seen a Wide that cheap. A Mutar, on the other hand, can
go for a lot less if you keep your eyes open. They are a
quality piece of equipment, and Zeiss made only 1,000
of each Mutar, so they are both rare and desirable.

Here's a link to my Flickr stream.
The Mutar photo is (there was a url link here which no longer exists).

Mark, I should have read your blog before posting my note.
I had not seen that you were addressing the image quality of
a photograph taken with a Rolleinar. A Tele Rolleiflex will not
focus more closely than 8-9 feet without the aid of Rolleinars,
and special Bay III Tele Rolleinars are available to permit
focusing down to about four feet. I use my Teles to shoot
close portraits. To do that, I stack a regular Rolleinar 1 on
top of the Tele Rolleinar and shoot through both Rolleinars,
wide-open at f/4. You can see results (there was a url link here which no longer exists) and (there was a url link here which no longer exists). Apart
from some vignetting, the Rolleinars do not seem to degrade
the image, at least in any way I find objectionable.

Sanders

Sanders, if you are stacking the Rolleinars, how do you focus? Do you focus first with the Rolleinars on the viewing lens and then move them to the taking lens? I have stacked them as well but have a sheet film back for focusing.
Dennis

Dennis, no, I just mount the Rolleinar 1 pieces,
both of them, on top of the Tele Rolleinar. And
then focus and compose as usual through the
viewfinder. (Given the design, you can't do this
with two ordinary Rolleinars.) Sanders

Stacking Bay 1 Rolleinars. They stack well. I've used #1 and #2 together. Depth of field is very shallow. Very. Parallax: have to guess a bit. I use Rolleipareil #2, can't stack Rolleipariels [no bayonet on fronts]. I fell off my bike on Tuesday, broke my hip. Now have plate and screws in there, at home recovering well. Not supposed to walk for 6 weeks.

Sorry to hear about your hip, Larry. I think you'd better send me all your Rolleinars.

Sanders, I'm still confused about the idea of focusing with stacked Rolleinars. I trust you that it works, I just cannot see how. When I stack close-up filters (are they really diopters?) on my Nikon, each one changes the focal point. Do Rolleinars work differently?

Cheers,
Tom

Sanders thanks for the advice I have seen Tele Rolleis for about 1k I'm possibly confusing my $ with £ sterling on the wide...
I'm intrigued by stacking Rolleinars after your post, at the moment I only have a #1 the #2 will be with me any day-then I can play around which is how I learn best.
Sanders I also found one of the images you posted called 'booper' to be truly beautiful -really lovely and wide open really shows not only what the Rolleinars can do but you mastery of technique.
Regards
Mark
PS get well soon Larry, I hope you have no pain.

From what Sanders says a Tele Rolleinar is a different kind of beast than the regular ones. No way to mount anything to the front of the top half of a regular Rolleinar. Though I did just try an experiment with a #1 and #2; I stacked the taking lenses together on the Xenotar, then put the #1 top piece on top and then just held the #2 top piece in front of the #1 top piece and whatdoyouknow it checked out on the ground glass of the sheet film back so it works.

Larry, sorry to hear of what sounds very seriously painful. I hope it heals quickly.
Dennis

There used to be a pretty good French TLR in the early fifties called a Semflex Studio with a 150mm Som Berthiot 5.4 lens that was on my wish list at that time, that would have been a good portrait camera,, but I was in the the military at that time and wasn't able to afford it . I wonder if anyone else has heard of them ?

Thanks for the invite Tom Been here over a year and never noticed the groups section...LOL Thought I would answer your question here instead of in the PM. Yes, I did end up getting the MX-EVS CLA'd by Mark Hansen at www.ikonrollieflexrepair.com . Took about a month to get it back. Not only did he do the normal CLA, he fixed a couple other little issues it was having. Prices were very reasonable and he was always in contact while he had my camera. I wouldn't hesitate to send another camera to him.

Aaron

Welcome aboard, Aaron... we're always looking for people to share ideas with around here... (actually, we're kind of like vampires... feeding off the blood of the innocent)

Cheers,
Tom

Last Friday I finally got something I've always wanted but could never afford -- a Rolleiflex. I bought it at an estate auction and believe that it's been sitting in a box in a garage for decades, at least. From the serial number it was most likely made in early 1939. I was tripping the shutter and the last time I fired it the shutter blades didn't close all the way and the winding handle doesn't want to wind, so obviously time and grime have taken their toll. I've e-mailed Mr. Hansen to see if that's enough of a description for him to give me a ball park repair / CLA estimate. In the mean time, are there any other Rollei repair folks you'd like to recommend? I'm in Indiana, by the way.

I also was a fortunate recipient of one of the 120-format folders recently given away here and have finally gotten a good roll of film out of it (I probably shouldn't have shot the first roll indoors, where I apparently am particularly bad at estimating exposure,) and then re-learning how to roll 120 film onto developing spools, but I seem to have gotten that sorted out now, too. That camera is so much fun that I blew another $10 at the auction for three old Kodak folders: a Monitor six-20, a something-junior Six-16, and another older one I forget what it is but at least it seems to take ordinary 120 film. I need to order a couple of rolls of 620 film and see if they have any 616 in stock. I'm curious to see what these cameras will do, especially with a nice big 6x9 negative.

Anyway, all this little camera stuff is a very pleasant diversion from my usual routine, which involves lugging 4x5 or 8x10 cameras around. When it's as hot and muggy as it's been, the smaller cameras have a real attraction!

Mike

There are a couple of well known Rollei repair people closer to you. The one I am familiar with is named Krikor Marlian with a company he calls KriMar and it is in New Jersey. He is famous for being very fast.. like same day turnaround. I had a camera fixed by him a couple years ago that still works fine.

I did a bit of research on Mark Hansen since he is right here in town and you will find testimony both ways about his work. I called him to see about fixing a very common problem with my 2.8F. The feeler roller was out of adjustment, so I wrote him and he had never worked on one before and wasn't sure how much of the camera had to be taken apart to adjust the roller. That pretty much scared me off.
Dennis

Does anybody know of anyone who does Rollei service in Canada? I know of Commercial Camera Repair on Church St. in Toronto. http://www.commercialcamerarepair.com But I have heard no reports from anyone on their service or turnaround times.

Ouch, that is kind of scary dpurdy When I searched around about him all I found was positive comments about his work. Mind if I ask what sort of negative things you heard? He was quick to answer any questions I had and fixed all the little issues my MX-EVS had (self timer not working, frame counter not resetting, sticky slow speeds, etc). I guess we'll see how his work holds up but, my camera is working smooth as butter now.

Aaron, I remember the discussion we had earlier and that was the first time I heard much about him. Then in another forum a discussion came up about repairman options and I mentioned Hanson and was immediately shot down by a couple of people. It would take a bit of research to find the exact conversations. I decided from your experience to give him a try but he wouldn't allow me to come to his shop personally and I needed to send the camera to him for an estimate to adjust the feeler roller because he didn't know what was involved in fixing it. The problem with my feeler roller is just that the gap is a bit too wide for ACROS film and I fixed it myself with a bit of masking tape on the roller to tighten the gap.

I e-mailed Mr. Hansen and he responded quickly and professionally. My only real concern is that he said he was 6-8 weeks behind and I'd kind of like to have it fixed before then. From his e-mail he seemed a straight-up, reasonable sort of guy.

http://www.krimarphoto.com/
this guy has an army of fans and is famous for quickness. He is a Rollei specialist
Dennis

I've been to Krikor's shop a couple of times and met him. He's very good about making sure you understand exactly what work is needed and how much it will cost. And yes, he is very fast. He's worked on three Rolleis for me, one of them one of the 35s.