A Rough Art Deco Rolleicord

Hello - got this at the camera show in NJ. Very rough, but they seem to command high prices.

 

This one has a very rough exterior, the viewing lens was bent inward, and the mirror, well, what mirror - horror, there was hardly any silvering left.

 

The taking lens had fungus on rear element.

 

I took it apart and it has been a learning experience, I would say almost therapeutic :).

 

Ordered a mirror on eBay, and replaced it (7.95$). Took front focusing plate off and the deco cover, straightened it out the best I could. Surprised at how flimsy that metal sheet holding the lenses was, one can bend it with bare hands. BTW, shutter worked well, the only thing that was intact.

 

Re-assembled back, cleaned lenses, re-calibrated focus. Loaded with Arista.edu 400 and ready for shooting. Will see how well it does, or how my "restore" job turned out. Stay tuned....

 

Wonderful! I've never seen one in the flesh and they seem to be super-rare on the auctions. Looks like a Triotar f/4.5 fitted? I'm looking forward to the pics.

i like the look of it id like to see the photos too

Thank you Rick and Andrew. We had sunshine today but also crazy gale winds, perhaps tomorrow might take it out to the park. Fingers crossed

Rick, that is definitely one of the slower triotars, should be ok as long as stray light is kept away

I have one of these, picked up from KEH 20 years ago or so. It needs a replacement mirror and the slow shutter speeds are very slow indeed, but it more or less works. The reason I could afford it at the time was because it was sold as inoperable--the problem was an ancient roll of color negative film from the 1950's that wouldn't allow the film to advance! I removed it and problem solved. The Triotar on this Rolleicord wasn't Zeiss's finest hour in my experience, and this lens has major problems with flare and low contrast by modern standards, but might be charming in some situations.

Hi AJG, i corroborate what you say, when i was callibrating the focus on taking, the image on ground glass was less than punchy, I am hoping if I keep the sun behind me and stop down to about f8 or more should keep flare at a minimum. Should not be a problem today, hopefully real Spring is upon us.

Of what can be seen in the picture, it looks like the "rough" is mostly on the viewfinder hood. If you can detach it, you perhaps can clean it and repaint.

Well you shame me Ralf. I have this very model in far,far far similar worse condition. Like yours, the shutter worked well. Mine is a pile of parts in a drawer. Only one of the four screws was removed, the other three broke. They were rusted in place. I tried 2x to cut a mirror from a Polaroid, I ordered one but got no delivery, I now have rcvd 2 which I will one day try, that are close to the original size .

So glad to see a post from you. Sounds encouraging that reference to "therapeutic"! Looks like you're ready to go shooting!

Before I decided to "fix" this I too, shot 2 rolls and what AJG said seemed spot on..flare, low contrast etc,

Please do post what you get!!

Nice find. The show you refer to, was it the "Second Sunday" show in N. NJ? Looking forward to your test shots. Do you use glass or wax paper to calibrate the viewing lens? I'd love to hear a little bit about your process.