Hi Marc,
Thanks for the little piece of history. I'll let my friend know about
it as well. I took a few rolls this weekend, but haven't had time to
develop them yet.
So far it seems like a really great little camera. The only problems
I've noticed so far is the impossibly dark viewing screen (an easy
upgrade, I imagine) and that the winding crank has to be all the way
in reverse (the second part of the winding) to fire. If it's been
fully cocked but the winding lever is slightly below the end of
travel, the shutter won't fire. It hasn't been a problem to ensure
proper positioning with my thumb.
When I looked at the lens through the back, I noticed that it actually
does have 10 aperture blades, I had mistakenly though it had 5 based
on viewing it from the front of the camera (silly me). I'm looking
forward to seeing the developed rolls.
Cheers,
Thor
On 31. okt. 2005, at 16.26, Marc James Small wrote:
Thanks for the numbers, Thor.
Hysteron proteron: you have to buy Prochnow in print the
old-fashioned
way. It is well worth the while to purchase the entire run of his
publications. One of these is a Rollei repair manual, by the way.
He is
now engaged on issuing Voigtländer Reports every bit as authoritative
as
are his Rollei Reports.
So you have a Rolleiflex 3.5A/MX (Type 1):
Body s/n 1287946
Taking Lens: 3.5/75 Zeiss-Opton Tessar T 913174
Viewing Lens: 2.8/75 Heidosmat T 633608
The numbering on the Heidosmat is problematic and these numbers seem
to
have been assigned by Rolleiflex and not by Carl Zeiss. That you
viewing
lens is marked with a red T is a rarity but has been previously
noted, I
believe.
The taking lens is part of a lot of 15,000 lenses completed on 5 OCT
1950
according to the factory records, so the lens on your gem must have
been in
storage for a few years before being installed in your camera. It
seems to
have been the practice of the era for Franke & Heidecke to order
lenses
well in advance from Zeiss -- and, until the early 1950's, a lot of
lenses
might come from either Jena or Oberkochen. We do not know whether
Franke &
Heidecke paid for these lenses at the date of manufacture or upon
delivery
and whether these lenses would have been stored at a Zeiss facility
or in
Braunschweig at the Franke & Heidecke facility. It is probable that
Zeiss
Oberkochen did not warehouse Zeiss Jena lenses and the converse, but
even
this is not certain.
The rule of thumb is that the guys at Oberkochen shifted the marking
on
their lenses from "Zeiss-Opton" to "Carl Zeiss" on 1 OCT 1954 and
that the
transition occurred at the 1,000,000 mark but the truth is not nearly
this
neat. Zeiss produced lenses in batches and numbered them sequentially
within these batches. As a result, there are Zeiss-Opton lenses
bearing
serial numbers well in excess of that one-million mark and some Carl
Zeiss
lenses with lower numbers. The changeover was a gradual one, as was
the
elimination of the red T marking indicating coating, though, in
general,
coated Zeiss-Opton lenses bear the T mark and coated Carl Zeiss
lenses do
not, a practice soon followed by Carl Zeiss Jena, Joseph Schneider
Kreuznach, and the Soviet lens factories.
Marc
msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
NEW FAX NUMBER: +540-343-8505
---
Rollei List
- Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe'
in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org
- Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into
www.freelists.org
- Online, searchable archives are available at
//www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
---
Rollei List
- Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe'
in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org
- Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org
- Online, searchable archives are available at
//www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
