A Man and His Rolleiflex

My late father, Chang Ta Kang with his Rolleiflex, circa 1955. Photo is a little faded because it is a photo of a very good black and white photo.

Great photographers who used squaFormat cameras

　In the book "Worlds in a Small Room", Irvig Penn wrote; "All the photgraphs in this book were taken with Rolleiflex Camera..". Rolleiflex was the first camera he owned, bought before he ever thought of being a photographer. By the way, I have read in some books that Diane Arbus used twin-lens reflex camera. Does anyone know what kind of camera she was using?

©1970 Stephen Frank
Originally posted at 5:17PM, 27 January 2005 PDT ( permalink )




Richard Avedon and his Rolleiflex.



Display block at the back of the camera. It really helped you make your decisions.



What a beautiful picture!



"All I want for Christmas is a two lens-Rolleiflex...."



A Box of Joy.

Or, speaking of Bond, there is the Rolleiflex in "From Russia with Love"
that contains the tape recorder.


Cameras from this Century

"We asked several personalities from the U.K. photo industry to chose three cameras taken from those made over the last 99 years that in their opinion, made the greatest contribution to photography.

David Bailey's choice: the Rolleiflex TLR (Twin lens Reflex), the 35mm SLR (Single lens Reflex) and the original Olympus Trip.

Gray Levett proprietor of the Nikon shop, Grays of Westminster in Pimlico, London chose the Nikon F, the Polaroid land camera and the Brownie 620 Box.

Pixel magazine December 6th 1999

In this particular posting,I will attempt to post portraits of Sarawak men and their Rolleiflex slowly, from time to time. This could lead to a very interesting discussion. Perhaps you can send me a photo of yourself if you are from Sarawak and you own a Rolleiflex from the 1950's.

Why does a man like a Rolleiflex? Why would any man be seen carrying a strange looking upright box(?) camera like that? The Germans, by the way have created very innovative designs with the most unusual shapes . Think Volkswagen. And yet, I know of a few men who did, found the Rolleiflex, their favourite camera. One of them was my father. Another man is Soon Lee Ang of Sibu. And may be Mr. KF Wong owned several of them!!Richard Avedon (USA), who took loads of photos of the Kennedy family, did.



Would you own a Rolleiflex?

Rolleiflex
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Rolleiflex 2.8F TLRRolleiflex is the name of a long-running and diverse line of high-end cameras made by the German company Rollei. The "Rolleiflex" name is most commonly used to refer to Rollei's premier line of medium format twin lens reflex (TLR) cameras. (A companion line intended for amateur photographers, Rolleicord, existed for several decades.) However, a variety of TLRs and SLRs in medium, 35 mm, and digital formats have also been produced under the Rolleiflex label. The Rolleiflex series is marketed primarily to professional photographers.

The Rolleiflex TLR film cameras were notable for their compact size, reduced weight, superior optics, durable and simple mechanics and bright viewfinders. An ingenious tapered mirror allowed the size of the viewing lens (the top lens) 'internal compartment' to be reduced, and this smaller compartment was dovetailed with the bottom taking lens 'compartment', which decreased the overall size and weight of the camera. The high-quality lenses, manufactured by Zeiss and Schneider, further differentiated the Rolleiflex TLR from many of its competitors. The mechanical wind mechanism was robust and clever, making film loading semi-automatic and quick. A wide range of accessories made this camera a more complete system, allowing close-ups, added filters and quick tripod attachment. Some art photographers still shoot with Rolleiflex TLR film cameras and black-and-white film, the later 2.8F and 3.5F models being very popular. Modern Rolleiflex TLRs are still being manufactured; available focal lengths include 50mm, 80mm, and 135mm. The late-model cameras are collectible, particularly in Japan.

Notable models

Original Rolleiflex

Rolleiflex Original with Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar f/3.8This first Rolleiflex was introduced in 1929[1] after three years of development[2], and was the first medium format roll-film camera, which was used with unpopular 117 (B1) film. It was a Twin-Lens Reflex camera.

Rolleiflex Automat
Introduced an automatic film counter; this counter senses the thickness of the film backing to accurately begin counting frames, obviating the need for the ruby window that forced the photographer to read the frame number off the back of the film itself.
This model won the Grand Prix award at the Paris World's Fair in 1937.
The first Rolleiflex to offer a Schneider Kreuznach Xenar taking lens as an option, in addition to the Carl Zeiss Tessar.

Rolleiflex 2.8A
Incorporated the first f2.8 taking lens (either an 80 mm Carl Zeiss Tessar or Opton Tessar) into the Rolleiflex line. It also added an X flash synch contact.


Tele Rolleiflex
This camera used a 135 mm/f4.0 Carl Zeiss Sonnar taking lens.

The new Tele Rolleiflex uses 135mm/f4 Schneider Tele-Xenar taking lens


Rolleiflex MiniDigi
A miniature 2-megapixel digital TLR released in 2004; a red version with 3.1 megapixels was introduced in 2006, a 5MP version available in red & black was released in Feb 2008, check out this link http://www.rollei.jp/e/pd/MiniDigiAF.html The new AF5.0 version is licensed by Rollei in Germany and made in Japan. It is being distributed by Direct Source Marketing (D.S.M.). www.dsmww.com