Show stealers.

Within a few hours of the official release of news of Leica's M8, the camera was being billed by many as 2006 photokina's show stealer; the digital gizmo which will send the company on a fiscal lunar trajectory. Shareholders will no doubt be wetting themselves in anticipation of this possibility after the recent years of Leica Camera Ag's dire straits experience.

There is another company which might have enjoyed a similar success, if only it had re-invented itself in the digital world.

Outside of Germany, Franke & Heidecke have lagged behind the more popular camera manufacturer brands for decades. Look back to forty year old photo magazines and you will find plenty of advertisements for their top of the line Rolleiflex cameras. Today, there is little to be found in print despite the fact that one of the finest current medium format modular systems, the Rolleiflex 6000 series, is acknowledged with a top performance professional camera.

In the decades following its introduction in 1929, the twin lens Rolleiflex (don't get confused here with Rollei's earlier stereo models.) ultimately became the medium format camera of choice for thousands of professionals and enthusiasts. With its finely engineered and durable build quality, Zeiss or Schneider lens options and a host of accessories, a Rolleiflex could be found almost anywhere in the world. My father used one in West Africa in the 1950s and his pals in the colonial airline he worked for all had them; a duty free perk that came with the job. They would fly off to Karachi or Rangoon, Bombay or Singapore, their brown leather briefcases stuffed with flight plans, overnight shaving kit, a brick of Verichrome Pan or Ilford Selochrome and a Rolleiflex.

I have vivid memories of those early childhood days when 'the Rollei' often took center stage at my parent's social gatherings, and when dozens of prints lay languishing in a bath tub full of water and Dad had to leave them in a hurry to fly off to Triploi or Cairo. The images fascinated me, as strange new things often do when you're a kid. Temples, oriental dress I could never have imagined - even if by then, I knew what a rickshaw was.

The Rollei concept spawned dozens of copy cat models from Meopta, MPP, Olympus, Ricoh, Sem, Waltz, Yashica and others; just about every major manufacturer had one. The more sophisticated and better engineered versions have survived and many are still in use along with Rolleiflexes and Rolleicords.

All of these different models use medium format 120 or 220 film. Rolleicords, the Yashica 635, Meopta Flexaret and early Ricoh models could also be used with 135mm format by fitting special adapter kits which accurately secure a 35mm film cassette, film guide and take-up spool in the larger film chamber.

One model of the tlr type which I have always fancied as an option for medium format street and travel work but which never quite made it in to the bag, is the Baby Rolleiflex. This is a smaller 4X4 cm format version of its larger 6X6 cm siblings which, when it was originally launched in 1931, was aimed at capturing, amongst others, female enthusiasts.



'THE SMALLER 4 X 4CM ROLLEIFLEX
Do you wish to work with a smaller size? Well the Rolleiflex 4X4 cm. (1 5/8" X 1 5/8") offers you a small-sized camera incorporating all the features of the mirror reflex design. The small Rollei is ideal for sportsmen, climbers, and press photographers and often appeals to women......'

(part quote from a 1939 Rollei brochure featuring the Rolleiflex Sport 4X4 taken from the Arthur G Evans book 'Collectors Guide to Rollei cameras' ISBN 0-931838-06-1)

The Baby Rollei lacks nothing of Franke & Heidecke's attention to fine engineering, but it used the 127 film format and although this is still available from some suppliers, choice of type is now fairly restricted. That's principally why I have never taken the plunge.



However, I know from shooting the 'Superslide' format on a Hasselblad for many years, that image quality is not an issue. 12 X 10 inch prints have all the attributes of cropped larger negs made with fine optics. But the Hasselblad, as much as I love using it, adds a lot of weight to the bag on a morning trot around town. A Baby Rolleiflex is light in comparison (750gms / 30 ozs) and its optics are excellent. The popular 'Grey Baby' type of the late 1950s and 1960s black version were fitted with either a 60mm f/3.5 Zeiss Tessar or Schneider Xenar while the pre-war Sports Rolleiflex 4X4 had an f/2.8 version of the Tessar.

Imagine a Baby Rollei fitted with a 38mm CCD sensor. Medium format digital quality from a camera that's not much larger than a Leica with a whisper quiet shutter unit. There must be plenty of room inside the camera chassis to shoehorn-in the electronics, space for a flash card and large capacity battery without changing the existing mirror reflex viewing system or the shutter mechanism and without adding much to the thickness of the back.

Would it sell?



The great attraction of the type apart from its compact size, is its viewing system. Once you become accustomed to the left-right, right-left, up-down, down-up visual co-ordination required, the twin lens is a doddle to use. And not only this, like all waist level viewing systems - which may also be quickly converted to eye level with a flick of the hood - it provides a different and dynamic point of view. Modern coated mirrors, condensing lenses and brite-view fresnel screens could all be used to heighten the viewing performance (and experience) to a level way above much that is currently available on a Dslr.

Rumour - as always rife before the event, suggests Franke & Heidecke may launch something new and special in the digital world. It would be too much to hope it will be a a 16mp digital version of the Baby Rollei. More likely, now that Zeiss are keen to offer their matched range of custom mount objectives to anyone, it could be a digital back version of the Rollei 3003 series, a model that has been crying out for a digital rebirth, just so long as it also offers users options to use 35mm format film backs.

A digital backed version of the 3003 engineered to the same high level as the original would not be inexpensive. But it's a modular concept which offers film and digital enthusiasts the best of both world's. Like the Hasselblad V system, only with less weight and less bulk. Why did I never buy into the original system?




At the time of its launch in the early 1980s, the 3003 system offered a wide range of glass and included at the wider end, the 15mm Zeiss Distagon (also offered by Leica as the Super-Elmar f/3.5, 15mm), as well as a handful of other high performance Zeiss designs. But at the longer end, the Rollei HFT branded telephoto objectives were less than optically perfect; I never did obtain a high quality image from the Tokina made 400mm or from the 80-200 f/2.8 zoom made by the same company. True, the 3003 could fit a plethora of M42 screw mount objectives when fitted with a Swiss made lens adapter, but I always figured that would just be too much of a hassle in the fast changing world of press and sports photography my days were occupied with then.

Now, life tends to be a lot more sedentary and a compact lighter weight system offering all the modular benefits of medium format would get my interest, especially if it came with full frame capability for the digital side.

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