As is my habit when I don’t have something to cover, I took a nap after eating lunch on Saturday.
When I woke, I gazed out the window and - whoa! what’s that sitting on the hood of my pickup?
Why, it’s a package, that’s what it is.
When Kindra or I get a package that’s too big for the mailbox, the carrier will drive up to the house and leave it on the hood of my pickup.
I was pretty sure I knew the contents of this particular package, so I slipped on my boots and got it.
Sure enough, it was from a camera repairman in Georgia who had been working on an early ‘50s Rolleiflex twin lens camera.
Careful readers may recall that I bought this camera in July from a weekly newspaper, where it had been sitting in a display for years.
The late owner of the paper bought it new and used it to take a roll or two of film a week until he switched to 35mm.
My guess is that he last used it in the 1960s, because the takeup spool in the camera was metal and stamped “Kodak Film.”
I started using twin lens cameras in 1978 and Kodak had long since switched to plastic spools.
Thus, it hadn’t been used in half a century before I paid too much for it and sent it off for repairs, which cost more than the camera did.
So I am now officially into this camera for too much money times two, but hey.
The camera is as old as I am and it’s working again. And it’s hard to put a price on that.
I started using twin lens cameras as a cub reporter at the Ada News in the 1970s and fell in love with their quirky operations and the beautiful photos they can make.
I still like to use them and typically shoot black-and-white film, although I popped a roll of color film in the Rolleiflex to take photos of Kindra and Bennett, who was over for the weekend.
Sometime ago, I set off on a quest to find a twin lens camera made about the same time I was.
It’s hard to get a specific date of manufacture because they didn’t always keep accurate records back then, but serial numbers are a good guide.
By the early ‘50s, Franke & Heidecke had rebuilt their bombed-out factories in Braunschweig, Germany, and built 109,000 Rolleiflexes between 1950 and 1954.
The lens on mine was made by Zeiss in Oberkochen, Germany, probably in the late summer of 1952, according to the serial number.
That would have been a couple of months before I kicked and screamed my way into the world, so I am claimng this Rollei as my birthyear camera.