[rollei_list] A chortle of delight, and other ramblings

My Rolleiflex Standard 622 would like to announce the arrival of a
younger brother.  I have yielded to temptation and bought a 120-only
3.5F Xenotar Whiteface in the 2853xxx range.

It's all Nikon's fault.  I went along to a trade show earlier this
year to gaze upon a D2X.  This was jolly nice in a lot of ways but
I realized that it and cameras like it were displacing top-grade
film cameras, and driving down secondhand prices.  A new Nikon D2X
would cost me seven times as much as a good-condition Hasselblad or
Rolleiflex!

This demanded closer study.  And closer study is something I enjoy
doing: I have given up any pretence that I am not a geek -- I am
unable to buy a packet of tea without researching the history of 
the East India Company -- so I read through a collection of papers
ranging from W D Emanuel's Rolleiflex Guide of 1950 (I'd forgotten
all about Dufaycolor with its speed of Scheiner 13 (approx ISO 2.5))
to a Rolleiflex 2.8FX brochure of 2002.

This latter has a diagram of the workings of a Rolleiflex showing
light rays passing through lenses (and in some cases off a mirror)
on their way to film plane and focusing screen.  The taking lens
is shown as being a 5-element-4-group lens with a flat cemented
interface in the second group from the front.  If I remember
correctly this is a Xenotar lens and I was shocked, shocked I tell
you, to discover such a misleading diagram in the brochure for a
camera with a Planar lens.

In the end, I decided not to picket Rollei's marketing offices
in Brunswick, but to spend the weekend taking photographs of my 
grandchildren and chortling with delight over my new toy.

Later,

Dr Owl

----------------------------
John Owlett, Southampton, UK



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