Bellamy Hunt of Japan Camera Hunter fame is back with another episode of Camera Geekery, his ongoing YouTube series wherein he highlights the unique designs and features of older film cameras.
This episode of the ongoing series features the much-requested Rolleiflex 2.8F, a twin-lens reflex (TLR) camera that was first available in 1949, but continued to be produced all the way through 2014 with the Rolleiflex 2.8FX. As Hunt explains in his video, the particular model he shows off isn’t your average Rolleiflex 2.8F either, it’s a ‘White Face Rolleiflex.’ What does that mean?
According to Hunt, these models, which are named as such due to the silver color used on the lenses and produced in the 1970s, are the last of the original line of Rolleiflex 2.8F cameras. Aside from using a more unique color for the lenses, the optics are also said to be improved from the original versions due to improved construction. They were also more expensive and fewer were made. As you can guess, these elements all come together to create a camera model that is sought after by collectors, as they’re viewed as ‘the last of the truly great Rolleiflex cameras,’ in the words of Hunt.
The full 11-minute video is a wonderful look at a beautifully-designed TLR camera and is well worth the watch. You can find more of more of Hunt’s videos on the Japan Camera Hunter website and subscribe to his Japan Camera Hunter YouTube channel to both support him and keep up with all future episodes of ‘Camera Geekery.’
Decades ago I was looking at Rolleiflex in the fabled London camera store 'Teamwork' in its original Covent Garden location. The owner there, Sven I believe it was, recommended me to buy the Planar 3.5F over the 2.8F for sharpness. He had both for sale, but said it was well known that the 3.5F was the better of the two Planar lenses. I took his advice and still own two of them. Can't speak to the veracity of this, but wanted to share it. I'm sure both are great cameras.
The Wide and Tele Rollei's are beautiful and rare things. Another TLR is the Koni-Omegaflex, which had 4 interchangeable lens options, removable film backs (great to swap film stock mid shoot) and took 6x7 images, not 6x6. A rare and overlooked camera.
Sorry for the criticism, but the work of the videographer who shot this blog about Rolleiflex was much more interesting than the examples that were filmed here on Rolleiflex. A few boring passing photos, I'm sure it could have been done better.
All of the 2.8 lenses on this camera are soft enough, less or more. Only one lens is really sharp, tremendously sharp - the Opton 75/3.5! When I used it, I have to carry 2 of them, because mechanical parts, sometimes, let me down. Especially when you go 120 from 220, and wise versa. The wide one with a 55 lens, was soft to the corners, but usable.
Are You sure you used Rolleiflexes?. I used 3 with no problems. Mechanical reliable as nothing else. My E2 with Xenotar 2,8 - Sharp as it could be like the Planar. My F with Planar 3,5 perfect as well. Maybe your magnifying equipment had the issues? But I must admit I never used 220 film.
Using this camera/lens for years (back in film days) - The 80mm Planar 2.8 is a fantastic lens, one of sharpest lenses around (along with the Planar 3.5). Same lens was used on the Hasselblad cameras of the film era as standard lenses. The camera itself was a mechanical marvel of handling, precision, & sturdiness.
The Rollei is always a talking point between the subject and the photographer. The actress Mira Sorvino asked me about mine, and I wrote a blog post on the encounter:
Slow lenses, expensive film and development, uncomfortable handling, etc.. but hipsters love it! But I have to admit, I didn't watch the video yet. Maybe I am missing something.
TLR's are a joy to use, yes they handle differently but still good as it's just a different way, today tho with the cost of film etc they're not that appealing
Long tonal scale from the excellent lenses. The ability to see your subject rather than having the camera block half of you face. Unique shooting experience. Ability to hide in plain sight for street photography, as no one can see you looking at them if your head is pointed down. Fantastic tonal separation. Lovely transition from in focus to out of focus because of the size of the negative. The camera itself is always a talking point between with the subject. I wrote a blog post about Mira Sorvino asking me about mine: https://500-weeks.blogspot.com/2020/04/mira-sorvino-knows-my-gear.html
TLRs handle like a dream and are more comfortable to carry than just about any other camera. I've never been lucky enough to own a Rollei 2.8, but I owned and used several Mamiyas and still own a grey 6003, which is about as close as a medium format SLR comes to a TLR.
My first camera was a Brownie Starmite II. I then graduated to a Yashica A TLR which I used for a good 5 years until moving into the SLR world. A bit awkward and bare-bones, it wasn't the fastest steed in the coral, but I cannot think of a better camera to focus one's attention to framing and composing a good picture. You had to think carefully with TLRs. Nowadays? Not so much. (The Yashica A I virtually gave it away to said hipster about 20 years ago.)
The look and feel of these cameras are probably great. The tonality it creates is stunning as well. Most likely, best to be used for portraits and not street photography.
My only wish is to have a digital back for them... it would be awesome!
I was an editorial photographer throughout the 1990s, and used a Rollei TLR for a lot of portraits. The lens produced a very long tonal scale that resulted in excellent skin tones. I wrote a blog about some of my images, including my photoshoot with a young Renée Zellweger. You can have a look and a read here:
Steven, sure, the more the better. I'm a huge fan of the 70's-90's photography. I really regret I missed the film days. Now I don't see it feasible for me to try it due to lack of spare time.
Wrong information. The lenses aren't different on the 2.8f whiteface, the metal plate that surrounds them is "white" because they changed how the design looked (they removed the black printed pattern found in the original ones). This is purely cosmetic and collectors value it because they were produced at the tail end of production.
On the 3.5f whiteface the lenses are different, 6 elements vs 5 elements found in early 3.5f cameras. However, late model 3.5f cameras without a "white face" can also be found with 6 elements, so it isn't exclusive to just white face units.
Exactly right, Pete. From Type-4 until the Whiteface, all 3.5F Rolleis all had a 6 element taking lens. The only additional value of the Whiteface 3.5F is the fact that it was the last of the "normal" Rolleis. But Rollei continued to produce TLR's long after the Whiteface. They had special collectable versions, an entire new line (built on the Type-4 body) - the GX line and lastly the FX line. Also, their date about when you could get a Rollei TLR is totally incorrect. The Automat line was available in 1937, and there were Rollei TLR'S before 1937. I hate when you have an article about a Rollei that has so many things in it that aren't correct or false.
Exactly right, Pete. From Type-4 until the Whiteface, all 3.5F Rolleis all had a 6 element taking lens. The only additional value of the Whiteface 3.5F is the fact that it was the last of the "normal" Rolleis. But Rollei continued to produce TLR's long after the Whiteface. They had special collectable versions, an entire new line (built on the Type-4 body) - the GX line and lastly the FX line. Also, their date about when you could get a Rollei TLR is totally incorrect. The Automat line was available in 1937, and there were Rollei TLR'S before 1937. I hate when you have an article about a Rollei that has so many things in it that aren't correct or false.
The Rolleiflex is a perfect camera for methodical photography as it slows you down. I love it and craved a 2,8 Xenotar more than a Leica in the day! Made plenty of great b&w prints from it. So portable, such high quality. A perfect digital camera for me would be a rolleiflex with a 36mp 6x6 sensor, no need for a screen even.
I once saw a wedding photographer shooting with 2 Rolleis and wow - could he change film fast in those things! I only used mine occasionally and never enough to become proficient with it, so it was always a "slow down" camera for me.
I once used a 2.8 E2 with Xenotar, and what a cracking lens. I px'd it for a 5x4 technical camera and when I got my next Rollei is was the 3.5f Planar. I found the Planar on this camera, I still have it, wasn't quite as good as that Xenotar which seemed to beat the Planar in micro detail.
A very affordable way to get into 120 film photo is the Russian Lubitel, a TLR with lots of vigneting and flimsy knobs, but fun and capable of interesting results. I still keep one of these boxes and works well despite age.
I have two Yashica Mat 124Gs and they're wonderful. I'd love a slightly faster lens and a faster max shutter speed but the 124Gs are a pleasure to use and produce great results.
I once owned a Rolleicord Va, then a Tele-Rollei. I bought the latter second-hand in mint condition in 1966 for £100 and should never have sold it. Today it would be worth well over ten times as much.
I have owned many cameras in the 68 years I have been a very keen amateur photographers and only a few were, like the Rolleis, so extremely pleasurable to use.
I cannot say that of modern digital cameras. The results are better except in two respects. The beautiful, smooth gradation you could get with the best lenses and top rate technique is gone. So is the pleasure of handling the best of German engineering. At age thirteen my father bought me a Retina 1a. That was a simple camera but almost as pleasurable to use and the same fine quality.
Then the best photos one saw were beautiful, lots of them but not so today. Every year in London, England I used to see the annual exhibitions at the London Salon and RPS. The former is gone, the latter now mostly rubbish.
'...the much-requested Rolleiflex 2.8F, a twin-lens reflex (TLR) camera that was first available in 1949, but continued to be produced all the way through 2014...'
That's incorrect. The Rolleiflex 2.8 series ran from 1949 (2.8A) to 2014 (2.8FX-N), but the 2.8F was only made from 1960-81.
I used a Yashica TLR in high school to shoot team photos. It was owned by my high school yearbook group. I was a photographer for the yearbook. Free Tri X
Always loved TLRs but could never afford a Rollei. Did borrow a basic Minolta Autocord once and it was a fine picture taker with an excellent lens. I've still got a Yashica and a Mamiya C330 plus some lenses.
The C33/330 and 22/220 models were great platforms for the lenses. The 65 was my favorite. I did have a Rolleiflex 3.5 and it made very nice images but needed a whole grade contra tier paper to get close to the Mamiya.
Lenses for the C330 range from terrible to pretty great, so it's hard to make a blanket statement. Mamiya lenses also seem to be made of fungus candy. I've never seen lenses so prone to fungus (or something) that etches right into the glass. Still, a good lens from the right series should compete with anything. I like large and heavy, but yeah, it's a boat anchor or a weapon when you need one.
Never had an issue with any Mamiya lens. I was regularly enlarging to 20x20 and was always happy. As for fungus, the environment would be the determining factor there. As I live in the desert and never saw an issue except on some older examples whose provenance was unknown.
I just checked the Danish version of Craigslist. There's one of these up for sale with an asking price of ~ $4000 (DKr. 25000). IMHO the 2.8 Rolleiflex is the most beautiful camera ever made. It makes me smile every time I see one. I have an old Rolleicord on my "museum shelf" but it's nowhere as pretty as this one.
Wow. I bought Xenotar one for 4000 DKK 4 years ago and I was thinking it was way too expensive. I wonder who is paying those prices - rich collectors I imagine?
@sirVir: Well, the camera in question is the much sought for "white face" variant which comes at a premium. And BTW, the price is an asking price - and the camera has been for sale since juli, so maybe the asking price is too high after all.
Eve Arnold Richard Avedon Maria Austria David Bailey Cecil Beaton Eva Besnyö Werner Bischof Bill Brandt Wynn Bullock Robert Capa Edward Clark Imogen Cunningham Robert Doisneau Harold Feinstein Fritz Henle Frank Larson Vivian Maier Lee Miller Helmut Newton Gordon Parks Irving Penn Pierre Verger
Check out Gerry Johansson’s amazingly beautiful photobooks, which he continues to make using photographs he continues to take with a Rolleiflex and continues to develop in his darkroom.
I have this one, for example, though it might be less appealing to Americans than it is to me or than other books of his would be to Americans:
@Samuel Dilworth Thank you. I have seen Gerry Johansson’s amazingly beautiful photobook Amerika (1998). Raising a family interfered with further artistry.
Phillip Forsten: “A book about American winters less appealing to Americans???”
I suppose so, in the sense that familiarity breeds a certain degree of contempt. Mike Johnston said something along these lines about this precise book, which may be why I mentioned that:
You cannot really make them for digital, without having a 55x55 mm sensor. The matte screen needs to be the same size as the sensor. And if you then make one you will probably have to make it slightly thicker for the sensor to fit.
Sorry, but a twin reflex camera is not all that useful as a model for digital cameras.
How about the LCD on a top deck to favor waist level viewing. Looking somewhat like a Hasselblad 500CM. No, better that Canon and Nikon have umpteen variations on the OVF APS-C DSLR.
It's more that the OEMs just don't try anything novel with the exception of Ricoh (modular camera), Sigma (Foveon) and, to a certain extent, FujiFilm with hybrid viewfinder.
Early on, some digital cameras had a swivel design—AND IT WORKED GREAT.
I like the classic TLR, used many, but Mr. Mamiya did invent and extend.
You could, of course, have a LCD on the top. That might be a nice variant on digital cameras. But, it will not be a TLR. It will not have the extra lens. It will have the looks of an SLR with chimney finder.
Yes. That's the idea. No one expects a dual lens systems like the TLR was. It's not needed for the silence and no moving mirror. And the parallax issues will be gone.
@Roland Back in 1996 I was using a tlr mamiya converted to digital rigged up to a computer doing some professional work only thing is that no one knew that i asked what sensor/size etc it was but it did it's job well
I've also used both (Rolleiflex 3.5F and Mamiya C330). The build quality of the Mamiya is best decribed as functional - it gets the job done but is nowhere near the smoothness of the Rollei.
Optically, too, the Mamiya lenses did the job, though some were better than others... but the Rollei's Zeiss (or Schneider) lenses certainly had the edge.
But that brings me to the next point. The Mamiya appealed because is lenses were interchangeable (I had the 55, 80, and both versions of the 180 at one time or another), and the extended bellows focusing allow close-up work. Rollei also offered different focal lengths (50 and 135), but you had to buy the whole camera with them!
Looking from the professional's view, many wedding-, fashion-, and special occasion press photographers swore by the Rollei; the Mamiya also caught for weddings, but it's rarely acknowledged elsewhere.
I bought my 2.8F Planar 51 years ago and used it often to photograph my children when they were growing up. Still have the camera and occasionally use it when film nostalgia hits. Still a beautiful camera: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51155036462_ba2cd1bffd_b.jpg
Bought my first Rollei (a D model with F2.8 Xenotar) at a PX in Japan in 1955 for $175. Took some of my best photos with it. It was a jewel but, now long gone.
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