The Rolleiflex 2.8F is a fully mechanical camera with all manual focus and manual exposure, meaning no battery needed. It is great to see that some camera makers today, like Olympus with the OMD EM5 and Fuji with the X series, are recognizing the value of the ergonomics in early camera designs.
This design is not only aesthetically very appealing but also makes the use of the camera very intuitive and smooth. You will see a camera with a simple and absolutely classical design. When you hold a Rolleiflex in your hands, you witness the beauty of camera engineering from another era. The result of this evolution is very visible when you see and start to use the camera. Although a camera with this age is considered pretty much ancient, we should not forget that this model had 20 years of design evolution by that time. The particular Rolleiflex 2.8F that I will talk about was made in 1960 and it sports a Carl Zeiss Planar lens with the focal length of 80mm. This is how I and a Rolleiflex 2.8F get acquainted with each other. So I thought it was time for optimization: I was looking for a small, lightweight TLR camera with a fixed, very sharp lens. I also realized that 90% of my pictures were taken with the standard 80mm lens. Yes, I am still young but perhaps not so young that I can carry this beefy beast without feeling it in my shoulders at the end of the day. the standard kit lens) made this camera and the accompanying lenses a heavy beast. I had only one major complaint though: the sheer weight and size of the body (1.7kg incl. All in all, I knew that my relationship with TLR cameras was not a one night stand. Today, I am still excited when I see the first scans turning into pictures from the newly developed black and white negatives. I still liked looking down into the waist-level finder. Based on my positive experience, I would dare to recommend this camera to everyone who is considering to embark on the medium format journey with a relatively small investment.Īfter one year use of the Mamiya, I realized that I still loved the pictures taken by this camera. Second hand bodies in good condition are still relatively easy to purchase for a good price on Ebay. The Mamiya C330f was a very capable camera and I liked it very much. Since I was not sure whether I could work with medium format cameras at all, I did not want to invest immediately into a Hasselblad system or a Rolleiflex camera. In addition, the Mamiya C330f is a system camera, so it supports a good range of interchange lenses. August 2011Īs a beginner in the medium format territory, I chose the Mamiya C330f as my first medium format camera for various reasons, such as price, design and build quality. Needless to say, I fell immediately love with medium format photography and I wanted to have a medium format camera to take pictures with similar characteristics.ĭommel, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. As a digital shooter and owner of a Canon 5D mark2, it was something new to me that I have not seen before. I was really impressed by the characteristics of those pictures: nicely balanced composition in square format, beautiful black and white (B&W) tones, shallow depth of focus and “mind blowing” micro-contrast details. While I was browsing Flickr and searching for some inspiration for my next portrait assignment, I came across some beautiful medium format portraits taken by excellent photographers using Hasselblad and Rolleiflex cameras. I remember it happened in a rainy afternoon.
In this article, I would like to show a glimpse of what the Rolleiflex 2.8F is capable of and share my experiences with this classic old timer camera. However, in my opinion, they provide a photography experience that cannot be matched by any recent digital single-lens reflex (or mirrorless) camera. Twin-lens reflex cameras are certainly an odd species nowadays. The lens at the bottom of the camera is the one that takes the picture (often called ‘taking lens’), while the other is used in the viewfinder system. The special feature of TLR cameras is that they have two lenses of the same focal length with their focal planes aligned. For people who are unfamiliar with how a TLR camera looks, the picture below shows a studio “portrait” of the Rolleiflex 2.8F, one of the most legendary TLR cameras in the history of photography.įuji X-E1 with Fujinon XF 35 mm f/1.4R f8, 1/125 So starting to take pictures with traditional twin-lens reflex (TLR) cameras was a very interesting experience for me. In the past 10 years, I have been taking pictures exclusively with various types of digital single-lens reflex (mostly Canon) cameras. Although my first serious camera was a Russian Zenit TTL, I consider myself a photographer of the digital era.
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