The Online Photographer reports that the firm of Franke and Heidecke is going out of business – perhaps permanently. That’s very sad news, for they are the firm that launched the famous Rolleiflex brand in 1929. As it happens, I bought a 1932 Rolleiflex Standard that I bought in a junk shop in Wales last year. I’d actually seen it a year before. The owner had spotted me with a camera and asked me whether I was interested in the Rollei. At the time I declined, but regretted it as I thought back to the beauty of the image in its ground-glass screen. So I was amazed, when I went back, to find it still unsold and snapped it up. I keep meaning to write a post about what you could, pretentiously, call the “phenomenology of technology”. The Rollei feels so different to a modern digital camera: since it is a twin-lens reflex, you hold it at waist level and look downwards; like other film cameras you don’t get the instant satisfaction of digital – you have to wait and see what came out; and since you have a mere 12 shots on 120 medium format film, you can’t just snap away and select for the best. There’s also the fact that is is a superbly made object. How many other machines made in 1932 still work, and work pretty well. Vorsprung durch Technik, I suppose. Here’s a photograph I made with it:
{ 14 comments }
Matt McGrattan 03.04.09 at 9:45 am
Very nice photograph. I also recently bought a Rollei, although I’ve been using a different TLR for a while.
Looking down through that ground-glass is very seductive, it has a ‘dimensionality’ or depth that looking through an eye level viewfinder does not. As you say, it’s easy to start waxing about the phenomenology of it.
robertdfeinman 03.04.09 at 3:15 pm
Welcome to the joys of medium format photography.
Later Rolleis had some convenience features (and a better lens), like a built in light meter and self setting of the film to the first frame, but the basic idea remained the same.
There are still new ones on the market, but they cost $5000+. Because of digital there are lots of used ones for a few hundred. Mine (which I bought in 1957 used) sells about $300 depending on condition.
All is not lost, the Chinese make the Seagull brand which is not as elegant, but is functional and only costs $150 or so new.
Keith M Ellis 03.04.09 at 3:41 pm
That’s a beautiful photograph.
brkily 03.04.09 at 4:53 pm
the range of tone seems almost infinite.
Mrs Tilton 03.04.09 at 9:11 pm
I’m strictly digital myself, but am saddened to hear this.
My father has been using his Rolleiflex since before I was born. He used it to make all those pictures of my bare-arsed-naked infant self, and many more therafter. He still uses it all the time.
He’s well set then, as long as film remains available. But I hate to think the kids will no longer have the option.
Slocum 03.05.09 at 12:14 am
the range of tone seems almost infinite.
The tones are lovely — but realize that you’re making that judgment about a low-res (500×500 pixel) version of digital scan of the print (or negative) rendered on a monitor. Which kind of suggests that you could have gotten the same results starting with a digital in the first place…
Keith M Ellis 03.05.09 at 4:34 am
I see what you’re getting at, but you’re in error. Digital image display technology is not the same as digital image capture technology. At least, insofar as digitally photographing an image requires more advanced technology than digitally scanning a photograph. You could convert film to digital images at a much higher quality than capturing them with a digital camera for a long time. You still can.
I think maybe my objection is probably just persnickety. But when reading your comment my gut instinct was that there something wrong in your claim in some deeper sense. But I’m not sure what it is if it’s not the fussy objection I just raised.
bad Jim 03.05.09 at 5:22 am
I too once had a Rolleiflex, and a home darkroom, and extolled the benefits of the largish format and the deep gray-scale of Kodak Plus-X film. I forget what paper we favored – Kodabromide, perhaps?
Still, it wasn’t feasible to carry an assortment of lenses, and my model was hand-cranked and thus much slower than an SLR (which mattered one time when I was snapping pictures of a plane dumping fire retardants on a brush fire). When it was stolen I replaced it with a Pentax, without a great deal of regret.
It’s easy to forget just how good black-and-white photography can be. One review of The Girl on the Bridge described it as gorgeous black and white, and I had to agree (while noting that Vanessa Paradis is very easy on the eyes no matter what).
Matt McGrattan 03.05.09 at 7:51 am
You could convert film to digital images at a much higher quality than capturing them with a digital camera for a long time. You still can.
That’s still sort of true, but not when using the cameras that most ordinary people are likely to use. The best digital equipment competes with everything except large format film [5″x4″ and above]. Of course the best digital equipment costs £5000-£15,000 plus, and you can buy a good second hand medium format camera for £150 and a scanner that’ll scan medium format negatives for about the same.
There is still a beautiful look that you get with medium format black and white film that’s very hard/impossible to achieve with a consumer dSLR, though.
salient 03.05.09 at 12:06 pm
There is still a beautiful look that you get with medium format black and white film that’s very hard/impossible to achieve with a consumer dSLR, though.
Is there some kind of rods-and-cones-analogous principle going on here? I’m not familiar with any digital cameras that are built to exclusively take black-and-white pictures: am I right to assume there would therefore be some loss in gray-scale definition or vividness, when taking a B&W picture with a digital camera designed for color photography?
Cranky Observer 03.05.09 at 1:00 pm
> That’s still sort of true, but not when using the cameras that
> most ordinary people are likely to use. The best digital
> equipment competes with everything except large format film
Except that the digital capture chips are optimized for color; b&w images (even in “B&W Mode”) are extracted from that data. Kodak had one line of chips specifically designed and optimized for black & white, but no market large enough to justify continued development materialized and it was canceled in 2004 (IIRC). Once b&w film is gone I think man’s ability to create rich b&w images will disappear to wherever voice phone call quality went, never to return.
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Matt McGrattan 03.06.09 at 8:17 am
I think that’s a mistake, Cranky, or that we needn’t be so pessimistic. The ability to extract decent black and white from modern Bayer-pattern sensors is pretty good. A couple of years back the dynamic range, noise levels and sensitivity in low-light of sensors of that type just came nowhere near film. Right now even people who were extremely skeptical about the ability of Bayer-pattern sensors to produce decent black and white images seem to be won round.
Also, some manufacturers are now experimenting again with non-Bayer patterned sensors, so all is not lost even if you think that Bayer-patterned sensors can’t do decent black and white.
Chris Bertram 03.06.09 at 8:37 am
Cranky probably needs to distinguish between (1) making good b&w images from a modern digital sensor and (2) making images with the tonal qualities of film from a modern digital sensor. I actually think that both of these _can_ be done sometimes, but (1) is much easier than (2), and the most reliable way to make an image that looks like film is, well, to use film.
Matt McGrattan 03.06.09 at 1:12 pm
Yes, I’d agree with that, I think.
Certainly by far the cheapest route to good black and white images is via film; which is why I still shoot a lot of film.
Medium format digital backs are amazing, but they cost as much as a decent new car.
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