Falling in love with Rolleiflex

As a result, Rollei was unable to develop any new models from , and production of its stereo camera finally came to an end. Rollei also suffered massive losses resulting from its inability to collect monies owed by debtors from "enemy states". Furthermore, bureaucratic formalities and controls hindered exports to neutral countries. This situation, combined with the collapse in overseas trade, forced Paul Franke to reduce the workforce to people.

Although these products consumed the bulk of the companies resources, some regular product development was still possible, and work on tempered glass lenses as well as flash synchronization continued, albeit on a small scale. The cameras were used inter alia in military reconnaissance. As Braunschweig was one of the centres of the German armaments industry , it was subjected to frequent, sometimes heavy aerial bombardment , which seriously damaged the city. On 1 and 15 January , and again on 13 August, Rollei too suffered air raid damage to its factories.

After the war, Braunschweig ended up in the British occupation zone. The allied occupying forces wanted Rollei to survive as a company, even helping it procure lenses from Zeiss, which had ended up in the Soviet occupation zone. Everything the company made in was delivered to the British Ministry of Defence. The difficult supply situation forced Rollei into using lenses from the West German manufacturer Schneider as well.

However, this was not a problem as Schneider's quality control was equal to that of Zeiss. Paul Franke's untimely death in the spring of had serious consequences for the company though. Not only did his passing mark the end of an era for Rollei, the loss of his business acumen also led the company to the edge of ruin on more than one occasion. After Paul Franke's death, his son Horst Franke succeeded him.

Overall, he proved to be less effective as a manager than his father. In particular, he lacked the flexibility required to adapt to changing circumstances; for example, he failed to reduce the workforce in difficult times, whereas Paul Franke had done so immediately at the onset of the war. To begin with, Rollei had no real competition, which yielded ever increasing sales of its cameras. In the s, almost every press photographer owned a Rolleiflex , and quite a few amateurs did as well.

The camera was so popular that it bred over imitations, more than half of them from Japan. The factory grew rapidly; by — the year the millionth camera was sold — the workforce numbered , and by the workforce had grown to employees. It was made from two cast metal parts. The top part contained a glass prism that was attached to the camera's focusing screen.

There were also knobs on top of the housing for adjusting the exposure and aperture settings. On the bottom, left-hand side of the housing was the focusing knob, and on the right-hand side, the winding handle and a frame counter. There was also a filter turret. A special flash bulb could be attached for flash photography, in which case a battery pack had to be installed inside the housing.

Of course, a viewfinder frame could also be screwed onto the housing. Although there were many imitators, none could match the quality of the original Rolleiflex — that is, until the Mamiya C-Series from Japan appeared in Mamiya initially offered three sets of interchangeable double lenses for it: By comparison, the Rolleiflex only had a single, fixed normal lens, although the Rollei Magnar tele-converter lens with 4x magnification was available as an accessory.

This could be attached to the front of the primary lens while a mask which did not magnify the image was placed over the focusing screen. In addition, Zeiss offered two double lens converters which attached to the viewfinder filter bayonet and the primary lens bayonet. The 5-element Mutar tele-converter magnified 1. The 4-element Mutar wide-angle converter magnified 0. In all cases, for the best image quality, closing down the aperture two stops was recommended. This explains why conversion lenses of this type were only regarded as a makeshift solution in comparison to fully interchangeable lenses.

In response to the challenge from Mamiya, Rollei created a camera comparable to the C Series and gave it to photojournalists to test. Although they were enthusiastic, Rollei did not believe — much to the astonishment of industry experts — that it could manufacture removable lenses with the required precision. This camera was particularly well-suited to portrait photography.

It only remained in production until , which today makes it one of the rarest Rolleiflex cameras — excluding special editions. Its main advantage lay in its ability to photograph large crowds at heavily attended events. Reinhold Heidecke kept on making new cameras right up until his death in , although no one bothered to admonish him over the development costs any more. One of his projects was the Magic , which required several expensive machine tools to be built — expenditure that could not be justified relative to the small number that were produced.

In contrast, Agfa preferred the opposite approach, of always developing as many models as possible from an existing camera housing.

How Rollei Cameras Became a Success Story

There were only two manual controls: By the end of s, the market for twin-lens medium format cameras had gradually become saturated. Although they were more expensive, single-lens cameras offered film holders , which could quickly be swapped an assistant loaded the film , as well as interchangeable lenses. Hasselblad was the market leader in this segment. The Swedish company introduced their first camera, the Hasselblad F , in However, this model was regarded as being technically inferior because its shutter was unreliable.

To solve this problem, the F was released in with a reduced shutter speed range, but the focal-plane shutter was still prone to failure. While it was no threat to the fully developed Rolleiflex to begin with, that situation changed when the legendary Hasselblad C featuring a Compur leaf shutter appeared in The management of Rollei under Horst Franke were caught napping, having failed to produce a camera that could match the latest Hasselblad.

As a consequence, sales plummeted and the company got into financial difficulties. In the end, Horst Franke relinquished his position as general manager. In , Rollei introduced its first slide projector , the P It included two slide trays: The Rollei Universal Projector sold for The P11 remained in production until ; many more projectors were subsequently added to the range, providing a major boost to Rollei's turnover. In retrospect, it seems unlikely that such an unusual format might return Rollei to profitability.

However, the German camera industry believed that this was the way forward, and both Leica and Wirgin through their Edixa brand produced similar designs. As no film manufacturer was interested in making this film format, Rollei had to manufacture the film itself. Loading the film simply required inserting the leader into the appropriate slot in the camera. Since there was no take-up spool, the film coiled up loosely on itself. Without a doubt, limited film choice and availability adversely affected camera sales, consequently only 25, units were produced. As Rollei also spent a lot on advertising, this camera did little to alleviate its dire financial situation.

Reliance on a film format that Kodak , the market leader, did not support was foolhardy. In addition, Mutar wide-angle 0. An improved successor, the Rollei 16S , was released in To help return the company to profitability, Rollei's management sought advice from a number of experts. One of them, Heinrich Peesel , a physicist from Hamburg, produced a concise, 5-page report that so impressed Rollei management that they offered him the chairmanship of the board, thereby accepting that far-reaching changes were necessary.

Peesel, then 38 years old, thus succeeded Horst Franke as chairman of the board on 1 January He promptly set Rollei onto an extremely risky course, which, despite some early successes, ultimately ended in a complete fiasco. His basic philosophy was to explore all possible avenues in photography rather than concentrate on a single product line. His approach was diametrically opposite to the company's previous management policy, as illustrated by the following example; when the British occupation forces queried Rollei as to the secret of their success, the response was: Peesel asked to see all the plans for new products so that he could evaluate them.

But in reality, few were actually built:.

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The Rolleiscop was a compact, upright slide projector that transported slides via a gravity-fed, conveyor belt system. The slides were stacked one behind the other into proprietary, slotless magazines. Each had a capacity of 32 slides with glass frames , or 72 slides with cardboard frames. Different sized slides could be mixed together as long as their frames were of uniform thickness and not warped. Peesel also increased the advertising budget significantly and reorganised production to improve efficiency.

In addition, he laid off out of supervisors and instigated a company-wide employee suggestion scheme. Turnover increased from 24 million DM in to 85 million DM in Others products that followed were less successful, yet the company kept on building new factories that were inappropriate to the size of their business. Although there had been speculation in the trade press over a future Super Rolleiflex for some time, it was not until that the SL66 finally appeared, SL being an abbreviation for single lens.

It was a sophisticated system camera , a camera at the heart of an extensive range of interchangeable components. In addition, the lens could be mounted in reverse, thereby enabling macrophotography without additional equipment. At long last, Rollei had a camera that could match the Hasselbad C. Indeed, had it been released earlier, around say, it could have been enormously successful.

On top of that, despite declining profit margins and tough competition from the Japanese, Rollei continued to target its advertising at the amateur market. In contrast, other companies such as Leitz and Hasselblad had better understood how to promote their expensive cameras in photographic magazines — not just through paid advertising, but also through feature articles in the editorial pages. As a result, the SL66 never sold in the numbers that the company had hoped for or needed.

Nevertheless, Rollei owes its survival as a company to the SL66 camera system, along with its enduring reputation for quality. Its successor, the SL66E , was released in ; externally the camera was largely unchanged, but it now had a built-in light meter. Prior to this, TTL metering required a special prism viewfinder with a built-in light meter. The release in of the SE Exclusive Professional incorporating selective gold-plating on the housing marked the end of the SL66 series.

Equally important, image quality was not compromised, despite the pocket camera format. Rollei also produced the Rolleiflex SL26 , an Instamatic camera with interchangeable lenses. It was widely regarded as the best camera that used film cartridges, even though this film format was only ever intended for beginners. Although Kodak, too, made an Instamatic SLR camera, their primary objective was to draw attention to their brand of film rather than make money from the camera.

Despite the high cost of tooling up to manufacture the SL26 , only around 28, were ever made. The SL26 cost Rollei now faced competition — not from a small company like Hasselblad, but from large, well-financed Japanese companies who could afford to advertise heavily in glossy magazines and trade journals. What is more, they invited photographic dealers to Japan to view their factories. The Rolleiflex SL35 was introduced in ; it was quite compact and comparable in price DM and quality with Japanese cameras.

At this point Rollei still lagged behind the large Japanese companies who already offered fish-eye lenses, super-telephoto lenses and zoom lenses.

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Although few amateur photographers purchased lenses such as these in the early s, from a marketing perspective, statements published in camera reviews like "lenses available with focal lengths from 7. Consequently, Rollei soon expanded their range; by a total of 16 lenses all with fixed focal-lengths were available for the Rolleiflex SL Despite state-of-the-art open-aperture metering, which was promoted with the catch-phrase "concentration on the essentials", sales of the camera were rather poor.

In spite of this, sales were well below expectations. Rollei's research and development department continued to follow the basic philosophy it had established for its medium format cameras: In , Rollei introduced a new, electronically controlled camera, the SL35 E. However, it lacked the reliability that was now expected of consumer products. One weak point, for example, was the mirror mechanism. In the mids, third-party lenses increased in popularity. This trend made it difficult for Rollei to maintain its declining market share because third-party lens makers were reluctant to produce Rollei-compatible lenses; low sales of Rollei cameras made it uneconomic for them to do so.

As a result, Rollei's customer base, which formerly consisted of enthusiastic amateurs, was now dominated by casual photographers. Although they generally preferred German-made products, they were much less inclined to buy expensive camera accessories. In , Rollei started to sell flash units, but without much success as this market was already crowded with offerings from other manufacturers — not just other camera makers, but also consumer electronics companies such as Metz.

Rollei subsequently released many more variants. In , Rollei introduced flash units for studio photography; there were three models E, E and E , each with a different flash head. A special feature of Rollei's studio flash units was a modeling light — a halogen lamp integrated into the flash head. This helped the photographer to adjust the lighting and select the most appropriate aperture. The advent of Super 8 film created a booming home movie market. This development had not gone unnoticed by Peesel, who decided that Rollei, too, should offer products for this new and expanding segment of the market.

Furthermore, recruiting new employees locally in the Braunschweig area had become increasingly difficult as around half of the local workforce was now employed by Volkswagen. Consequently, Peesel embarked on a search for a suitable location for a branch factory, preferably in an underdeveloped area within reach of Braunschweig.

The first stage, completed in , was used to manufacture slide projectors, studio flash systems and, later on, the Rolleimat Universal enlarger. However, the factory at Uelzen became redundant after Rollei transferred most of its production to Singapore. The site was put up for sale, but no buyer was found and the factory finally closed on 1 October The buildings stood empty until The A26 [16] was the smallest camera that used Instamatic film. It was cleverly designed, folding together to protect the lens and the viewfinder. The A , [17] a successor to the Rollei 16 , was a pocket-sized camera that used film cartridges; it was compact, stylish and highly regarded.

Later on, Rollei released a cheaper alternative in silver, the E Between and , Rollei commissioned a little known Japanese company to manufacture a range of three, basic pocket cameras. These were sold under the brand name Pocketline by Rollei. However, sales were poor, although precise sales figures are unavailable.

Although wages in Germany were low to begin with, they increased steadily, which prompted Peesel to negotiate an exclusive agreement with the government of Singapore in to manufacture photographic equipment there. In return, he promised to create 10, new jobs by the year Clearly, Rollei would not be able to finance an expansion on this scale itself, so it approached two regional German banks — the Norddeutsche Landesbank and the Hessische Landesbank — who subsequently became shareholders in the company.

In those days, risky investments such as this were not that uncommon; Peesel's imperious demeanor within Rollei had so impressed the bankers that they were confident of their investment. Only after the collapse of the Herstatt Bank did financial institutions become more prudent in their lending. Rollei's factory in Singapore astounded everyone, especially those outside of Germany; at that time not even the Japanese had successfully managed to carry out precision manufacturing on the Asian continent. Although Rollei Singapore was fully autonomous, it did not do any product development.

In , Rollei's workforce was distributed as follows: Consequently, after a long and draw-out start-up phase, contracts to manufacture on behalf of third-parties were accepted from This would make it possible to restart production in Asia later on should this be necessary. Rollei, Carl Zeiss and the state of Niedersachsen would each receive one third shares with Rollei retaining exclusive rights to its brand names.

Although the trade press regarded the takeover as a long overdue consolidation of the camera industry in Braunschweig, the merger made no sense from a business perspective; from it Rollei gained neither new products nor new customers, nor did it have any use for the additional production capacity and employees it acquired — all the more because the factory in Singapore was under-utilised. On 26 August , after Rollei made a loss of 37 million DM on revenue of just million DM, Peesel left the company "by mutual agreement". The banks considered liquidating Rollei, but decided instead that restructuring the company would be more worthwhile, setting out the following requirements:.

On 1 April, Peter Canisius Josef Peperzak, the former head of Canon in Germany, took over the leadership of Rollei with the intention of fundamentally changing its pricing and marketing policy. Rollei had already shown the Rolleiflex SLX to selected journalists in Singapore in , and presented it at photokina in , but this innovative camera did not go into production until September It was the first microprocessor-controlled medium format camera in the world, whereby the aperture and shutter speed were set electronically via two linear electric motors built into the lens.

This technology was expensive and rather unreliable to begin with, but the advantages were compelling nonetheless. An updated model with improved electronics was subsequently released in Most importantly, these innovations allowed Rollei to distinguish itself from Hasselblad.

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Its Swedish rival promoted the extraordinary reliability of its cameras, as shown by the role Hasselblad cameras played in the missions to the Moon — publicity that was impossible to trump. Rollei, on the other hand, emphasised the advanced electronics and ease of use of its cameras.

The SLX lacked an exchangeable film magazine, although a Polaroid back was available. This product generated renewed interest in the company, because, prior to this, dissolving required two projectors connected to a special controller. But the P made this effortless, like running a normal slide-show. Above all, there was no longer any need to alternately load the slides into two magazines. The Rolleimatic was the last new camera to go into production before Rollei went bankrupt.

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Planning started in and the cameras were manufactured between June and September The Rolleimatic was released onto the market without being subjected to the extensive testing that was usual, with the result that it suffered from unreliability, just like the SL35E had before it. Rollei's bankruptcy brought production to an early end. Perzak's behaviour became increasingly erratic; in an attempt to save the factory at Uelzen, he got Kaiser Fototechnik in Buchen to develop an enlarger , which Rollei sold as the Rolleimat Universal.

Although it was extremely popular, the market for amateur photo-laboratories was much too small to make any difference to Rollei. On top of that, Peperzak cancelled Rollei's appearance at photokina In the end, he left Rollei on 28 February. Overview Discussions Photos Members Map. I fall in love with film every day. I really like the looks of the Rolleiflex. I know they are good. A friend has a 3. Surprised how leight it is. The cameras with meters are superfluous; I use a Gossen hand held meter for accurate results.

The Rolleiflex T, is slightly less robust than its big brothers, but still a fine performer if you find a good one. I have a Tessar that is blazingly sharp, although uncoated. For portraits you're going to want a 2. Frino Davide 6 years ago. Lordcroker81 Posted 6 years ago. Edited by Lordcroker81 member 6 years ago. From your post it seems that an important criteria is weight.

Luckily all Rollei's are lighter than a Hasselblad, but there are variations between the different models. The lightest being the Rolleicord range, late versions of which should not be dismissed. Any Rollei TLR would be a good choice for portraits and the difference between the 80mm and 75mm focal lengths isn't that great in practice. Similarly, only you can decide whether an f2. After all, the Tessar was the lens which Rollei built it's reputation on! You already own a Hasselblad, so know what to expect from a Planar.

Rollei 35T Pocket Size Camera

I'm also assuming that you have a hand held meter, which is a good thing, as metered Rollei's command a much higher price. I've not noticed any difference in quality between the Planar and the Xenotar, although each lens has its band of loyal followers. It depends what you are looking for the Rollei to deliver.