Franke & Heidecke - Rollei TLRs

The idea for the TLR is said in some histories to have occurred to Reinhold Heidecke in the trenches in 1916, as a way to take photos over the parapet without exposing the user's head (his arms, perhaps not unreasonably, being regarded as less important). This is a little too convenient a story: Heidecke would certainly have been very familiar with the considerable number of large-format TLRs made in the previous thirty years or so and, as my history page outlines, there had been reflex-type cameras around since the mid-nineteenth century. The genius of Rollei, however, was to create the first serious medium-format rollfilm TLR - and to get so much of the design right just about first time, so that the model essentially evolved only in the details for the next fifty years.

Heidecke joined up with Roland Franke in 1920, the firm producing a range of stereo cameras (Heidoscop for plate/cut film and Rolleidoscop for roll film). The latter lasted until 1941, but in 1929, the Rolleiflex was born, and created the F&H legend. One school of thought has it that the Rolleiflex was born due to Heidoscop users developing the habit of taking normal single photos by covering one of the two taking lenses and then the other to take two different exposures before advancing the film. This view is borne out by Claus Prochnow's history (Rollei Report 1), which tells of the factory sawing a Heidoscop in half and experimenting with the viewfinder placement. However, this story also ignores the simple fact that Rollei must have been well aware of the general layout of successful earlier large-format TLRs - Rollei was to my mind more about brilliant engineering rather than outright invention.

In the line of development, the crank advance arrived for the Rolleiflexes in 1931, which format broadly saw the line out. Later "bells and whistles" like light meters merely refined what was from the outset a winning formula. With the crank-wind 'flex, the knob-wind tradition transferred to the cheaper Rolleicord from 1933 onwards.

From the mid-70s, Rollei hit growing financial problems, and various owners followed bankruptcy in 1981, culminating in a management buyout from Samsung in 1999. Later TLRs since the 2.8FX have had a strong Japanese/Korean input or sourcing.

There are many passionate Rollei collectors, and the information here does not aim to compete with that in the myriad websites and specialist publications. I have made some corrections and expansions based upon one or two comments on the online Rollei Users Group (unfortunately these took a while to reach me as the rather loud-mouthed chap who initiated criticism there didn't have the decency to let me know directly that he had issues...).

In 2010, Ivor Matanle borrowed a tranche of my Rolleis for one of his Icons of Photography series of articles in Amateur Photographer - which I strongly commend as one of the few general photography publications to maintain an interest in older film cameras.  A copy of the article can be viewed here, by kind permission of the editor.  (Note that this is copyright of AP and should not be reproduced.)

Follow some of the links on my "Links" page for more information. For the best sequential display of all the models I know, take a look at the Global Rollei Club site.

If you find any errors on this page or have any camera I might be interested in, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. Click on the small "thumbnail" pictures below to go to larger ones.

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Rolleiflex Models

The distinguishing characteristic of the Rolleiflexes - after the first "Original" model - was the cranked film advance. The engineering of these was very sophisticated in the 'Thirties - later, it just became incredibly robust and reliable. Unless abused, Rolleis rarely break.