I have a new camera. Well, not exactly new as it’s even older than I am, but new to me anyhow.
This story goes back a long way, all the way to my childhood in fact. My first proper camera was a Rolleiflex twin lens reflex, a delight to handle, immensely flattering of a novice photographer’s skill and always remembered by me with particular fondness. So when my husband found an article about vintage cameras and suggested he bought me one as a birthday present, I said yes. It took a little while to bring this project to fruition – about 15 months actually, while I hummed and hawed over which model I wanted (I was absolutely sure I wanted a Rolleiflex) and fretted about asking him to pay the astronomical prices now asked for the sought-after later Rolleiflexes with Planar lenses. I tried to buy one on eBay but the seller got very shifty about my inspecting and collecting in person, which started alarm bells.
So in the end I decided the best was the enemy of the good, and a couple of weeks ago I pottered off to the splendid Aperture in London and bought the first Rolleiflex I’d actually held in my hands for more decades than I care to count. To be honest it was a sale the moment I set eyes on it, and when I opened the case and smelled the wonderful musty, musky smell of my childhood photography days, like Proust I was completely lost. I went through the motions of trying different shutter speeds, checking the crank worked, the focusing knob was smooth, and the lens was clean. But it was already a done deal. Aperture offers buyers a couple of weeks’ grace to put a film through the camera and check all is well, so it felt a safe decision. Would it take pictures still, over half a century since it was made? Would I remember how to use a camera like this? Or had I just bought a rather expensive bookend? To be honest I didn’t much care. Hell, here was a portkey to my photographic past, and I was in!
For those interested in the technical side of things, my new plaything is a Rolleiflex 3.5B with a Carl Zeiss Tessar f3.5 75mm lens, also known as the 3.5 Rolleiflex MX-EVS type 1, made some time in the early 1950s. Not the best or the most sought-after model, but probably very similar to the one I owned the first time round.
FOOTNOTE: Of course this is not intended to replace the stable of Nikons that I use for my professional work. But I think I will learn from the discipline of using a very simple camera on which not much can be changed and which requires me to work very slowly and carefully.
MADABOUTGREYS 