The End of Rolleiflex

The Art of Photography

Ted Forbes

Diy, Art, Arts, Visual Arts, Image, Technology, Photography, Tv & Film, Culture, Tutorials, Gadgets, Photographers

4.5 • 942 Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2015

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rolleiflex has long since been an icon of amazingly built, high end cameras originally produced by Franke & Heidecke in Germany. The name Rolleiflex actually refers to the name of the Twin Lens Reflex line of cameras that debuted in 1929. Rolleiflex was long considered the top standard in build quality, optics and design. Sadly, the news came out on March 13, 2015 that the German auction service, Proventura will begin liquidating the Rolleiflex factory starting on April 20, 2015. You can see over 1,000 photographs on the companies auction listing page. In this video I will give some thoughts about what this means and about antique camera collecting and use in general. I know that many of you are film shooters and love old cameras. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well so feel free to comment. The Proventura auction page: http://www.proventura.de/insolvenzversteigerung-des-kameraherstellers-dhw-fototechnik-gmbh-ehem.-franke--heidecke-gmbh-salzdahlumer-str.-196-38126-braunschweig/auction/2669/bildkatalog#katalog The story from Petapixel: http://petapixel.com/2015/03/13/rolleiflex-factory-to-be-liquidated-at-auction-heres-a-look-inside/ Subscribe for more videos! http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theartofphotography Twitter: http://twitter.com/tedforbes Instagram: http://instagram.com/tedforbes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aop.podcast Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/tedforbes Website: http://theartofphotography.tv Watch More Episodes: Rolleiflex MX-EVS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KKEDZukOR4 Flexaret VII Twin Lens Reflex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE-Uvm1g3KU Ansco Automatic Reflex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh-leVbMe00&list=PLGEE7pGLuppSdB4MA7tPiKsYzCIO2DfLP And get on our mailing list to stay up to date on photography news and the latest episodes: http://theartofphotography.tv/about/mailing-list/ Thanks for watching - if you like this video, remember to share it with your friends! Ted Forbes The Art of Photography 3100 Main St #135 Dallas, Texas 75226 My name is Ted Forbes and I make videos about photography. I’ve been making photographs most of my life and I have a tremendously deep passion for photography that I want to share with you on YouTube. The Art of Photography is my channel and I produce photography videos to provide a 360 degree look into the world of making images. We all want to get better so lets do this together! I make videos covering famous photographers, photography techniques, composition, the history of photography and much more. I also have a strong community of photographers who watch the show and we frequently do social media challenges for photographers to submit their own work. I feature the best and most interesting on the show when we do these so come check it out and get involved! So come check it out! If you’re a fan of DigitalRev, Fro Knows Photo (Jared Polin), Matt Grainger (That Nikon Guy) or Tony Northrup - you’ll love The Art of Photography. I make video’s giving you a deeper dive into photography techniques, composition and history to compliment the other channels you love to watch. New shows come out every Sunday, Tuesday and Friday.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody Ted Forbes here and welcome back to the art of photography I want to talk a little bit in this video about
0:04.9	Rolloflex and I have my Rolex MX EVS Twin Lens reflex with me one of my favorite cameras
0:11.1	one of the coolest ones in my collection I think and this has been such a joy to shoot on.
0:15.0	I've done a lot of photographs on this over the years.
0:18.0	And the news came out about two weeks ago.
0:20.0	I saw the story run on Petapixil, and I'll link up to everything in the show
0:23.3	note so you can check it out but the news came out that Rolex had gone out of
0:26.3	business. Petapixil ran the story and there's also a link in there which I'll
0:29.8	link up as well to the auction website that had over a thousand images of various
0:35.0	parts and images of the factory and everything that they're getting rid of and
0:39.0	this is really sad news indeed and I had several people that emailed me and asked me what my thoughts
0:43.9	were on this and I thought this would make an interesting discussion topic for the
0:47.4	show and I'd love to hear you guys chime in on this as well I know that a lot of
0:51.4	you shoot on classic cameras and a lot of you shoot film and I'd be interested in your
0:54.5	opinions in the comments so please leave one if you would like. My opinion is
0:59.5	is that you know a company like Rolloflex and I think you could put several other companies into
1:04.3	this category as well people like Lika and Hasselblad that there comes a point when you've
1:09.2	been around for a long enough time where you're competing with your former self, particularly if you're going to still make
1:14.0	TLs. And I know that in the last 10 years at least, Rolex have been manufacturing TLRs. They had electronic
1:19.8	light meters in them with varying degrees of reliability, but these cameras were, you know,
1:24.5	retailing at around five grand which is a lot of money for a camera and
1:28.1	particularly one like a twin of them reflects that has some limitations to it and this is kind of sad to see anybody
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