Love my Baby - Rolleiflex 4x4

I dug through my closets and found a Bay I Rolleinar set 1 and a set 2 that has the separate Rolleiparkeil. They will supposedly work on the 44s... I do have the Parker book as well as the other older book by Evans. Only shade I found is a Yashica Bay 1- I don't think it'll work on these cameras.
By the way, I put the Primo Jr back together (but not too tight in case I have to take it back apart again). I've been dry firing it all day and it works great. Not a hint of any sticking on the shutter leaves. I got most of the haze off that back element but not all of it. We shall see if it affects the images or not. I"m just happy to have found the Primo Jr is was sold as a non working collectible and it's actually in excellent shape. Better than the other high priced ones on eBay right now. So I got it at a very bargain price, along with a nice copy of the manual and the Primo lens cap! So it was a good gamble, you win some and you lose some.
 
50385662321_f3b51766a2_b.jpg
From my test roll on Sawyer's Mark IV bokeh test
 
Nice! The sky and leaves (upper left) look a little "swirly" maybe, but that may just be the shape of the leaf canopy. Otherwise, looks good, if not the last word in sharpness. What aperture/speed, do you recall?
 
KoNickon said:
Nice! The sky and leaves (upper left) look a little "swirly" maybe, but that may just be the shape of the leaf canopy. Otherwise, looks good, if not the last word in sharpness. What aperture/speed, do you recall?
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I was focusing on the leaves in the corner there, everything else was supposed to be out of focus, and it was taken wide open at f2.8. Why have an f2.8 lens if you're going to shoot at f16, right?

I hope to get some better shots from the next rolls. This one was just making sure it worked. Actually, I did get 12 shots out of the roll, even though I had that little hiccup with the first one. I shot an extra one at the end and that made up for the one shot I lost at the beginning.


Now I am getting ready to finish up the second roll on slide film and getting ready to load up the Primo Jr.


Jim
 
I figured you had to be shooting wide open. I realize I very rarely do that myself -- don't trust my focusing and hand steadiness enough!
 
KoNickon said:
I figured you had to be shooting wide open. I realize I very rarely do that myself -- don't trust my focusing and hand steadiness enough!
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How are getting on with your Primo? Haven't heard anything in awhile and was just wondering. I found yet another Primo Jr, the early type with Tokyo Kogaku on the lenses and no logo on the viewing hood, so now I think I'm officially collecting them, now that I know how to fix them. :) As it turned out, this one the lens came right out with no trouble. I just took it out to clean the lenses a little, the shutter was already good, amazingly.
 
Ha! thanks for following up -- nothing to report as yet since I haven't gotten around to ordering any Rerapan (though I'd love some HP5+ in 127, ideally). Been spending more time lately getting the Baby Rolleiflex properly working.
 
Had a tlr from Sears - Tower brand- that used 127 film. Bought mine used in the 1960’s. As I recall I paid about $25.00 for it. I used it to make color slides as they would mount, same size mount as a 35mm slide and they worked with my Kodak Carousel projector.

Smiles.
 
Haven't shot my Sawyer's IV in awhile but this thread got me fired up. Dug in the freezer and I only have 4 rolls of Macophot left (exp 2008). I bought a lot of it around the turn of the century (it was relatively cheap) and put it in the freezer. I shoot about two rolls a year in the camera but this thread got me thinking about rolling my own. Currently I do 620. I've been looking at this gizmo https://www.camerhack.it/product/fck127-mk-3/, not cheap seems easy to use. Does anyone here have one? There are some youtube videos on using it. Two things concern me, (1) 120 film is a heck of a lot longer than 127. The videos do not cut the ends of the take up and tail of the backing paper. (2)The Sawyer requires you to advance a new roll to 1 on the backing paper. How will I know where the first frame is? This seems problematic on any method of using 120 film.
 
Primo Jr etc.

Primo Jr etc.

Well my second Primo Jr has multiple issues that are probably going to make it a parts camera for me. First it was major hazing on the inside of the rear element that I can't remove and now I seem to have jammed it with shutter open all the way in trying to clean the lens from the inside. All efforts to free it have failed. I will probably use the finder from this one on my other Primo Jr, which has a finder with a rivet that doesn't allow the finder to open smoothly. So far it works, but I can see it starting to bind and leave marks on the inside of the finder. I imagine it failing at some point. Luckily I didn't pay much for either camera, so I can be happy with one Mark IV and one Primo I suppose.
 
Sorry to hear about Primo #2 -- even with the haze, that's a sharp lens, isn't it. No ideas about unjamming the shutter; you've probably done (more than once) everything I would try.
 
Beemermark said:
Haven't shot my Sawyer's IV in awhile but this thread got me fired up. Dug in the freezer and I only have 4 rolls of Macophot left (exp 2008). I bought a lot of it around the turn of the century (it was relatively cheap) and put it in the freezer. I shoot about two rolls a year in the camera but this thread got me thinking about rolling my own. Currently I do 620. I've been looking at this gizmo https://www.camerhack.it/product/fck127-mk-3/, not cheap seems easy to use. Does anyone here have one? There are some youtube videos on using it. Two things concern me, (1) 120 film is a heck of a lot longer than 127. The videos do not cut the ends of the take up and tail of the backing paper. (2)The Sawyer requires you to advance a new roll to 1 on the backing paper. How will I know where the first frame is? This seems problematic on any method of using 120 film.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that this seems like too much hassle. Might work fine with a Baby Rollei since that doesn't rely on the red window.
 
KoNickon said:
Sorry to hear about Primo #2 -- even with the haze, that's a sharp lens, isn't it. No ideas about unjamming the shutter; you've probably done (more than once) everything I would try.
Click to expand...


Oh yes I've tried everything. The hell of it is, the shutter worked fine when I got it! I killed it while trying to clean the rear element from the inside with 91% alcohol. I will be putting a finder with a plain top on a camera that should have one with the Toko emblem though but oh well, I can live with it not being perfectly original, I guess.
 
Good to see this thread still going strong... I have not been on RFF at all the last few months. The good news is that I just processed 13 rolls of film dating back to the beginning of the pandemic and SEVEN of those rolls have been with the Primo Jr. That camera and the Leica II have been my primary users. I'm gonna start a spin-off Primo thread, just need to work through a work-flow plan because I also had to replace my main computer:rolleyes:
 
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