This occasion was before the TLR was damaged by salt water from a rogue wave in late 2022. Though the camera body can be repaired, the elements in the 3.5F Planar 75mm lens have separated due to a breakdown in the glue used to cement lens groups together. This cannot be fixed in Australia as the people with the necessary optical skills aren’t working any longer as they have either retired or died. So the camera can no longer be used.
This is a pity as I have had the TLR since the early 1980s. It became my favourite camera as it was an excellent, lightweight walk around medium format camera that made good images. Replacing it with another Rolleiflex TLR in good working order is just too expensive — its approx. $A2-3000+ .
This is one of the last images that I made made with the TLR — light amidst sea fog:
I replaced the TLR with the more latter all mechanical, Rolleiflex SL66 from the 1960-70s. The latter was made by Rollei in response to the medium format photographers abandoning the Rolleiflex TLR in the early 1960s and moving to the more flexible Hasselblad and Mamiya SLR systems. Rollei’s series continued with the 6000 series in the 1980s before they went bankrupt. They had a 80-year run.
Like Rollei Hasselblad in the first decade and a half of the 21st century were trapped by a vicious cycle of limited capital, short-term decisions, small scale, high production costs, and aging brand. But in 2017 the financial resources provided by the Chinese drone maker DJI, who had acquired a majority stake in Hasselbald, enabled them to make the transition. Unlike Hasselblad Rollei had no Chinese investment and they were unable to make the full transition to digital technology. Rollei’s transitional attempt was the 2007 hybrid film/digital Hy6, but the digital back was just too expensive then. Things have changed since. The recent Hasselblad 907x and its CFV 100C digital back, though expensive, is a more financially accessible modern digital version of the old medium format film cameras.
Though the old Rolleiflex SL66 is solidly built and much more versatile than the TLR, with its interchangeable film backs and lenses, it is much heavier and more cumbersome to use. It’s a brick. I carried the SL66 with me when I was walking in Japan in 2023, but I didn’t use it as an everyday, walking around camera. I only used it on specific occasions.
What is emerging from my little experiment about light is that I am finding that photographing light is more difficult than I’d expected. I struggle to find ways to do it, or to find the suitable situations. Hence my hesitation about this experiment becoming a series.
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