Rolleiflex 3.5 C type K4C #7
by RicardMN Photography
Title
Rolleiflex 3.5 C type K4C #7
Artist
RicardMN Photography
Medium
Photograph
Description
Rolleiflex TLR camera 3.5 C type K4C
Production : from 1956 to 1959, about 43.000 units
Format : 12 exposures of 6 x 6 cm on 120 type rollfilm.
Viewing lens: Rolleiflex Heidosmat 1:2.8 f=75mm
Taking lens: Carl Zeiss Oberkochen Planar 1:3.5 f=75mm, Coated.
Filter Bayonet : Both lenses, size 2
Lighmeter system: Selenium photo element, 2 ranges, meter in place of the Memo disc
Coupled Depth Of Field indicator
Parallax error correction.
Shutter: Compur-Rapid X CR00 leafshutter. Speeds 1 to 1/500 sec. and B.
Flash synchronization : Sync socket on frontpanel. X synchronization
Selftimer
Double exposure prevention
Color Lacquer : Black
Color Leatherette : Black
Dimensions WxDxH: 111 x 96 x 146 mm
Weight: 1120 grams
Rollei was a German manufacturer of optical instruments founded in 1920 by Paul Franke and Reinhold Heidecke in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, and maker of the Rolleiflex and Rolleicord series of cameras.
After Paul Franke's death (1950), 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 1950s, almost every press photographer owned a Rolleiflex, and quite a few amateurs did as well. The camera was so popular that it bred over 500 imitations, more than half of them from Japan. The factory grew rapidly; by 1956 – the year the millionth camera was sold – the workforce numbered 1600, and by 1957 the workforce had grown to 2000 employees.
Hans Hass, the underwater diving pioneer, approached Franke & Heidecke to see if they could make him a special housing suitable for underwater photography. As a result, Rollei developed the Rolleimarin, an ingenious underwater camera housing rated for depths up to 100 m. 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 1956. Mamiya initially offered three sets of interchangeable double lenses for it: normal, telephoto and wide-angle. Later on, additional double lenses with focal lengths of 55 mm and 250 mm were introduced; one even had a dimmable viewfinder lens, which enabled depth of field adjustment through the viewfinder. 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 1.5×, weighed 327 g and could render an image accurately in the viewfinder up to a distance of 4m from the object. The 4-element Mutar wide-angle converter magnified 0.7×, weighed 437 g and could render an object accurately from a distance of 1 meter. 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. Instead, as a compromise, the company introduced in 1959 the Tele-Rolleiflex with a Zeiss Sonnar f/4, 135 mm lens. This camera was particularly well-suited to portrait photography. Meanwhile, plans for another model with a 150 mm lens were abandoned. The Wide Angle Rolleiflex (also known as the Rolleiwide) with an f/4, 55 mm lens followed in 1961. It only remained in production until 1967, 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 1960, 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.
The Magic, although intended for amateur photographers, was relatively expensive at 435 DM. It featured an automatic exposure control system driven by a coupled selenium light meter which could select shutter speeds from 1/30 sec to 1/300 sec and apertures from f/3.5 to f/22. There were only two manual controls: one for focusing, the other for selecting either a shutter speed of 1/30 sec (for flash photography), or Bulb (for long-exposure night photography). Its successor, the Magic II, cost 498 DM and also featured manual exposure control. (Description from Wikipedia)
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July 15th, 2022
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