Rolleiflex SL35 - returning to a classic

There are four venerable names in the world of optics - Zeiss (Est. 1846), Rollei (Est. 1920), Leica (Est. 1913) made in Germany and Hasselblad (Est. 1841) made in Sweden. Although there are many fine cameras and lenses now a days from Asian based companies and optics manufacturing has ubiquitously moved to China, Thailand and Taiwan for almost all mass-produced consume products, optics made during the heyday of lens making has a special place in collectors hearts.

Rollei, along with Hasselblad, is primarily known for their medium and large format cameras. Rollei's first foray into the 35mm film format came in 1970 with the introduction of the Rolleiflex SL35. They were late into this film format as Japanese manufacturers Canon and Nikon were creating exceptional 35mm cameras, the Canon A series cameras being a prime example. Rollei didn't have the engineering manpower to devote to the SL35 project team thus it's simplicity in design. The light meter employs a Wheatstone Bridge, which in grossly oversimplified terms is a circuit design that measures an unknown electrical resistance (which is the intensity of the light being metered) to a known resistance reference - thus the bridge. Compared to modern metering systems the Wheatstone Bridge is arcane, slow and suffers from a memory effect when metering a bright scene. However, when used in systems that don't have EV compensation it works perfectly well. There's a stop-down button adjacent to the shutter release that activates the meter.

Production of the SL35 moved to Singapore from West Germany after 1972 thus the 1970 to 1972 models are the most sought after models by collectors. The two lenses that were used most commonly with the SL35 were the Zeiss 50/1.8 Planar T and the Zeiss 50/1.4 Planar T. The later being made in Germany in small numbers. The German made Zeiss 50/1.4 Planar T is one of the sharpest 50 prime lenses ever to be produced.

My Rolleiflex SL35 was bought new in 1977 by my father in Iran. It's a 1970 model and is in amazing condition because he only used it for a couple of years while stationed in Tehran as an engineer for Korean Airlines. Although it's perfectly capable of being used for everyday shots, autofocus and complex metering are really new inventions, where this camera really shines is for pictures that have high dynamic range such as landscapes captured on transparent film - the best of which is Fuji Velvia 50 slide film. Digital cameras are still unable to match the resolution and color fidelity of film when captured with a good lens. I'm excited to try out this camera and I'll post scanned shots soon.