[Rollei] SL 2000F,SL 35 E shutter and related stuff

[Dirk-Roger Schmitt <Dirk-Roger.Schmitt]

Hello folks,

concerning some discussion in which I also took part on the matters of the 
subject I read half an hour in Prochnow at my local bookstore.

Here are some results:

SL 35: Mr. Peesel, chairman of Rollei, was putting once Mr Prochnow a 
Pentax Spotmatic on a table and said: "I want that you build this camera." 
Complaints of Prochnow months later about the lack of open aperture 
measuring where not accepted by Peesel.

SL 350: Only few information about history given. Prochnow says it is the 
35 mm camera of Rollei he likes best.

SL 35M(E): Due to the overtaking of Voigtländer / Zeiss Ikon  by Rollei 
they got a lot of production tools ready to make thousands of cameras. So 
it was cheaper to decide to use these tools than to build new tools for 
mass production of SL 350.

SL 35 E shutter: As the fabric shutter is large and fixes the camera design 
(first the shutter was to be developed and than the rest of the camera 
designed around the shutter) Rollei wanted the small metal blade shutter 
for more flexible design. They looked at a Seiko shutter which had the 
mechanics on the left side. They decided to design a similiar  own shutter 
with more symmetrical shape with mechanics on the left and right side. As 
Rollei wanted to compete strongly against Japanese manufacturers they 
wanted to have an own shutter and not to be depended on Japanese supply on 
a key product.

SL 2000F: First design came from an architect from he city of  Hamburg who 
presented his design proposals to Rollei. First design looked like a 
smaller SLX. Second proposal he presented was accepted by Rollei and they 
used this shape to develop the 2000.

80-200 Zooms: The first 80/200 MC zoom was from Tokina, the second 80/200 
HFT from Mamiya.

Aperture automatic: They tried to develop a system to use the lens pin to 
close the aperture to a defined degree by mostly keeping the whole 
bajonette design. A patent existed to stop the pin at a certain position 
with an electro magnetic system. However, this was not regarded to be too 
much reliable and thus not followed.


Some of our Rollei friends did express their information that

The 35 E shutter and 2000 design came from the overtaking of Zeiss/Ikon / 
Voigländer.

According to Prochnow that seems NOT to be the case.


Who later on build the SL 2000 shutter is still unclear, however my 
information (not from Prochnow) says that it always had been a Copal 
shutter (maybe after Rollei specs.)


Best greetings


Dirk

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