the International Rollei Club

Bought it yesterday from Marktplaats, the dutch online flea-market.
It is such a beauty! And it seems to be in great working order.
Lenses are clean, body looks like new. Meter is not worse than my other 2.8F.
The aperture and time wheels run so much smoother than on that camera.
It has quite a low serial# (2404191), so I guess it is from 1960-61.

BUT it is not perfect.
Some fool has screwed a circular plate in the tripod-connector that will not come off by hand.
And also cut a hole in the bottom of the ever ready case.
Because of the plate the camera can not stand on its little feet. In the photo I used the lenscap to balance the camera.
I will send it to Will van Maanen, the dutch Rollei specialist to take it of the camera.

Only now do I feel that I may post in the My Rollei collection-thread
Later I will sell my other 2.8F, that I bought less than a year ago, but until then I am the proud owner of a Rollei collection!

I forgot the most important thing: to add an overview of my whole Rollei Collection!

Congratulations

(yes, my message needs so and so many characters, but what else should I say?)

Thanks Jan!
You are right of course. What more can one say... But I just had to share my excitement.
And not many people around me share my Rolleiflex fascination, so I turn to you, dear fellow club members
L

"And not many people around me share my Rolleiflex fascination, so I turn to you, dear fellow club members ",
just like in the James Bond movies, when the villain turns to Bond to show and explain his evil plan (neither his wife nor his kids care)

In that case I am sort of a lucky villain, I suppose.
Because my wife and son are nice enough to listen to my Rollei-talk and look at my little toys for a while.
But not for too long of course…

But now for something completely different:
It turned out that my new 2.8F suffers from a bit of lens-seperation on the taking lens.
Too bad I did not notice it when I bought the camera (so much for my Rollei expertise).
Luckily it does not seem to impact the picture-taking capability (I just checked the first roll of TriX that I had developed).
But my excitement is somewhat cooled down now...

L

Usually lens separation moves very slowly. I can't even see yours so it will probably be many years before it spreads enough to have an impact on image quality. There are places that can separate the elements and then re cement them for a few hundred dollars or euros. Yours shouldn't need that for many years.

Thanks for your comforting words.
The Rollei expert that I took the camera to for a CLA thought it would not get worse.
We will see…

And about re-cementing the elements when it does get worse:
I was told that because of the bigger size of the elements, this is more risky with a 2.8 than a 3.5 lens.
(And I have only read about 3.5 lenses that were successfully re-cemented, no 2.8's).
So I'll have to be very desperate before taking the risk of ending up with a broken element.

Theoretically there is the possibility of finding a replacement lens, from another 2.8F.
One that is a total loss with a perfect lens that can be transplanted to my camera.
In my dreams, anyway.

Actually I have had a 2.8 Planar on my 2.8F taken apart and recemented and re coated by a man in the USA named John Van Stelton (I think was his name)( http://www.focalpointlens.com/fp_intro.html ) It worked fine. The risk is that it takes some heat to separate the elements in the first place.

I don't know the name but I believe a place in France also does this work.
Dennis

Thanks for this very useful information!
And very good to know that the recementing of your 2.8 worked out well.
Was that done recently? At what price?

I saved the Focal Point link and I will search for the address in France.
For now I just have to live with this imperfection.
Anyway that's what I keep telling myself.
But this new info makes me not so sure about that anymore…

Nice find, and indeed lovely little collection. Notice the difference between the Rollei labels on the hoods!