That old Rolleiflex from the flea market in Portland

I was down at the Portland Saturday Market last weekend and this older guy had a beat up Rolleiflex 3.5E on his table for $40. I could see the taking lens had some haze but the viewing lens looked clean and the crank moved smooth. Anyone here ever try cleaning a taking lens on one of these without messing up the focusing mechanism?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_anna22d ago

Wait, did you check if the taking lens is actually a mismatched replacement? Some of those older Rolleiflexes got swapped out over the years. I've seen a few where the focus action feels fine but the lens elements are loose because someone glued them in wrong. The real trick is to test the focus at infinity first before you touch anything. Put the camera on a tripod or something solid, point it at a distant object like a building or a tree line, and see if the viewing lens matches the focus on the ground glass. If it's off by even a little, you might have a bigger problem than just haze. Also, check if the focus is smooth throughout the entire range. Sometimes the helical grease gets gummed up and people force it, then the lenses get out of alignment. That's a much harder fix than a little haze. I'd take a chance on it for $40 either way if the body is solid and the shutter fires. Even if the taking lens is a dud, you can find replacement lenses online for not much.

kim.emma21d ago

That infinity test is actually a good way to check the viewing lens and the taking lens match, but you're a bit off about the ground glass part. On a Rolleiflex, the viewing lens has its own focusing mechanism, so you focus through the waist-level finder and that moves both lenses together. The ground glass you see is the viewing lens, not the taking lens. If you want to check the taking lens focus, you actually have to open the back and put some frosted tape across the film plane, then look at that while opening the shutter on B. That's the only way to know if the taking lens is actually sharp. But yeah, for $40, even with a loose element or bad alignment, it's still a good deal if the shutter works. Those Compur shutters alone are worth more than that.