As I explained recently, I came across a tired old Rolleiflex that needed to be saved from its confinement in a dusty antiques store and restored to active service. With a bit of work, Your Humble Filmosaur got it up and running; all that was left was to run a test roll and see if there was hope for it, or if the years had been too much for it. I put in a roll of Ektar 100 and headed out, knowing that the uncoated lens might not be ideal for color film, but figuring it was worth finding out just what it was capable of right at the start.

I’m going to say the film test was successful. In truth I was pretty well stunned by the quality and clarity of the images, as well as the color rendering through the uncoated Tessar. The Rolleiflex is a pleasure to use, smaller than my Ciro-flex and more convenient as a result of the crank film advance that handles frame spacing automatically. Seeing just what it can do, I imagine the battered 80-year-old little black box is going to quickly become my go-to medium format camera.