[rollei_list] Re: Double Rolleiflex stereo camera
- From: Don Williams <dwilli10@xxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:44:11 -0500
At 07:39 PM 10/3/2012, Carlos wrote:
Don:
Dr. Hans Hass realized that a TLR with uninterrupted ground
glass viewing would be very useful for underwater photography and
convinced Reinhold Heidecke in 1951 about to build an underwater
housing for the Rolleiflex, a technical team was formed for the
purpose and Hass worked with this team to design the first
Rolleimarin in 1953, Heidecke liked the results very much and gave
instructions to Richard Weiss to build an underwater stereo camera
(Heidecke was stereo cameras fan in spite of the market lack of
interest for these cameras in the '50s), the old models were not
suitable as underwater cameras and then the TLR Stereo camera was
built. Three prototypes were made and the three units had its
Rolleimarin, the stereo camera Rolleimarin was based in the
Rolleimarin 1 design, however adapted for the stereo camera different
controls and size, the design was ready in 1954, and then the
regular Rolleimarin and the stereo camera Rolleimarin were developed
almost simultaneously and they look similar externally.
Carlos
Thanks for the history. The Rolleimarin is a superb piece of
engineering and design but with my advancing age I no longer dive, so
the camera and housing are, for now anyhow, just mementoes. One of
my regrets is that I missed a meeting of the Historical Diving
Society in Santa Barbara during which Dr. Has signed some Rolleimarins.
If you haven't used a Rolleimarin you may not know that there is one
undesirable feature. When you use the optical viewfinder your view
is in the wrong direction when you are tracking a moving subject. We
never notice this in normal use but underwater it's a bother,
especially when focusing on close up subjects. A pentaprism would be
the answer but the reality is that would make the housing too large
and expensive- it already weighs 13 pounds in air. (I just grabbed
my 3.5F and sure enough, the reversed image works just fine
topside. You just get used to it.)
I once had a job in which we used precision glass prisms for
surveying distance measuring. I actually let the prism vendor take
my housing with the notion that he would make a pentaprism for
me. Fortunately, before he got very far I stopped the project
because he would have had to cut and weld the housing.
I have made only one modification to my housing- I made the internal
winding crank wider by adding a composite plastic piece to
it. Otherwise the crank is driven by a narrow aluminum arm. I do
know that one company in California used to re-work housings to use
O-ring seals but the cup seals, for which I bought spares, worked
well for me. They also designed a connector to handle the high
voltage for strobes. I always used flash bulbs because of their
higher light output. I made my own flash arm which had a tilt-in
head with markings appropriate for various Rolleinars. When not
using close-up lenses I used home-made CC-R filters which were
helpful down to 20-30' in clear water. (I made duplicate filters for
my light meter.)
Anyhow, more than you ever wanted to hear- I tend to do that.
Thanks Carlos for the history.
DAW
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