By Clive G -
hewholuvsfotos@gmail.com -

Back in the day, it was every Photography student’s dream, including mine, to own a medium-format camera. Whereas the SLR cameras we owned produced negatives that were just 19mm wide by 35mm long (hence the term 35mm film), medium format cameras used 120 film and produced negatives that were 60mm wide and 60, 70, 80 or 90mm long, depending on the make of camera. Bigger negative meant that bigger and more detailed prints could be made and so, we naively believed, our photographs would be that much better.
The trouble was, medium-format cameras were considerably more expensive than 35mm cameras. Art students have never been renowned for their wealth, what with having to buy their own materials and running up large tabs at the local hostelry, so for many, including myself, owning a medium-format camera remained just a dream.

One day some years after graduating and not long before I first came to Oman, I visited the Egyptian Rooms at the British Museum in London. It was a lovely balmy evening when I emerged from the Middle Kingdom and so I decided to walk down to the River Thames. My route took me along Museum Street and it was there that I passed the window of a second-hand camera shop. Among the many vintage cameras in the window was a 1959 Rolleiflex TLR for the very affordable sum of £95. I returned next day with my chequebook and bought it.
Whenever I show this beautifully engineered camera to young people these days, many of whom seem to think that film photography dates from Tutankhamen’s time, their first question is usually “Why does it have two lenses?” The answer is that the top lens is the one through which, by means of an internal mirror set at an angle of 45˚, the photographer views his subject and composes his photograph, while the bottom lens is the one through which the photograph is taken. This is why the camera is known as a twin lens reflex (TLR), the word reflex in this context meaning that the image is reflected to the photographer.
The second question these children of the digital age usually ask is “Why is the image in the viewfinder back to front?” To which I reply, “Have they stopped teaching basic physics in schools along with everything else?” To which they usually reply, “No, but physics is really boring and anyway we’ll never use it in our lives when we grow up.” Well, at least the arguments that are advanced by school kids for not studying haven’t changed over the years.
The Rolleiflex TLR is not without its drawbacks, the biggest being that it has no built-in light meter and so it needs to be used in conjunction with a hand-held meter in order to get correct exposures. But whatever its limitations, these are far outweighed by the Carl Zeiss f.2.8 lens which, coupled with the 60mm square negatives the camera produces, captures pin-sharp images that can be enlarged to almost one metre square without any loss of detail.
A couple of years after coming to Oman, I became friends with a photography nerd by the name of Derek. Independently of each other, we had been struck by the ethereal luminescence and colour of the sky over Muscat in the five minutes immediately after sunset during the winter months. So between us we came up with the hair-brained idea of producing a book of photographs taken during that five-minute window, which we would call Muscat — City of Light.
For the best part of half a year, Derek and I photographed Muscat from every conceivable angle during that five-minute window, I using my old Rolleiflex and Derek a Hasselblad. We climbed to the roofs of tall buildings, we scaled mountains, we were attacked by feral dogs and we got told off by the police and the army on numerous occasions. Derek and I spent hundreds of rials on film and hundreds more on getting it processed. Eventually, we had about 100 photographs that didn’t look too awful, so spent months putting together a mock-up of the book to show to a publisher in Dubai.
Now before you rush to your local bookshop or log on to Amazon.com to order your copy, I should tell you that the book never made it into print. Don’t get me wrong, the publisher in Dubai loved it, wanted to go to town on the design, do a print run of a couple of thousand copies, throw a lavish launch party in one of Muscat’s top hotels, invite a famous person to make a speech, the works… as soon as we gave him a cheque for several thousand rials as insurance against poor sales.
The photographs I took on my Rolleiflex for the ill-fated Muscat — City of Light have been languishing in my photographic archive for the past 22 years, unloved and unused. But just for your delectation, I have pulled three of them out, scanned them and include them here. I don’t know what you think (though I’d be delighted to hear your feedback) but my first reaction when I scanned them was ‘My word, aren’t they colourful!’
I am sorry to say that I rarely take my old Rolleiflex TLR with me when I go on photography trips these days. Why that is I cannot really say, for I still think it is a smashing camera and great fun to use. I did, however, take it for a spin to Al Hamra a few months ago, loaded with black and white film. Just to show you how much a photographer’s aesthetics can change over the years, I include one of the images here.
If you would like to have an enormous amount of photographic fun and take super high-quality photographs that you can blow up to huge sizes, then the good news is that old Rolleiflex TLR cameras are available on ebay. The bad news is that they have become much sought after in recent years. The cheapest one I could find with the Carl Zeiss f.2.8 lens was going for about £500, which is five hundred times more than you might pay for a Bakelite Kodak Brownie 127. So, does that mean the Rolleiflex is five hundred times better? Well, no, but if I had the choice between five hundred Kodak Brownies 127 and one Rolleiflex TLR, I know which I would choose.