Gossen Light Meter Overview
Gossen Starlite 2 All-in-One Light Meter
Replacing the Gossen Starlite, the Starlite 2 is Gossen’s latest all-in-one top of the line light meter offering unrivaled capabilities and multiple functions. Three individual meters are specially incorporated into this one precision-measuring instrument: An exposure meter for ambient and flash; A CINE meter for filming; A light measuring instrument for illumination intensities and luminances. Among its many metrological highlights, the Starlite 2 includes a broad range of high performance features for flash measurement. It’s capable of measuring individual flashes, calculating multiple flash illumination and analyzing flash and continuous illumination — even with several flash units in combination. The Starlite 2 provides the user with precise results, even for highly complex tasks.
Gossen Color-Pro 3F Light Meter
The Gossen Color-Pro 3F is specifically designed for measuring the photographic color temperature of flash and ambient light, and to indicate the measured results in degrees Kelvin (K). However, there is much more to it, after comparing the color temperature measured with the pre-selected color temperature of the film, in degrees Kelvin, the COLOR-PRO 3F calculates out the filter values required to achieve photographs without color casts. The resulting filter values can be expressed as light balancing values in Mired or Kodak WrattenTM values. In addition to the above the COLOR-PRO 3F will also indicate in CC filter values the correction required, for example when working with fluorescent lighting.
Gossen Digipro F Light Meter
Slim, sturdy and ready to twist! The Gossen Digipro F is the latest member of Gossen’s family of high-quality exposure meters for digital and analog photography. This high-precision exposure meter for flash and ambient light features a swivel head that makes measuring and reading a breeze for both professional photographers and dedicated amateurs. The stylish, lightweight Digipro F is small enough to sit comfortably in a shirt pocket. It features a user-friendly interface, which can be easily operated with one hand.
Gossen Mavolux 5032C Light Meter
The Mavolux 5032C is a handy, easy to use, highly accurate light meter capable of measuring illumination in either footcandles or lux. Candelas/m2 and footlamberts can also be measured with the optical luminance attachment. The Mavolux 5032C is equipped with color correction, so that its spectral response is matched to that of the human eye. Integrated cosine correction is included in order to ensure that oblique incident light is also evaluated correctly.
Gossen Mavo-Monitor Digital Illumination Level Meter
The Gossen Mavo-Monitor is a precision digital instrument for measuring luminance with the measuring sensor placed directly on a luminous or backlighted surface, for instance monitors (CRT/LCD), TV screens, light boxes, light panels, traffic signs and ground glass. An easy to handle, user-friendly measuring instrument for professional applications in industry and service, for special checks and certified testings according to the existing safety regulations, above all at work stations, in medical and office systems.
Gossen Digisix Light Meter
The Lightmeter that fits in the palm of your hand. Digisix is a Digital/Analog exposure meter. It’s great looking, great value and a true travel companion that’s packed with more features than you’d ever expect. The Digisix is small enough to sit comfortably on your camera’s hot shoe (with optional shoe adapter), and sports a digital read-out and analog scale for ambient light levels that can be measured in reflective or incident mode. Digital read-out in EV is easily transferred to a setting ring where all the shutter speed/f-stop combinations can be read at a glance. But the Digisix doesn’t stop there. Not only is it an exposure meter, but it also offers a functioning clock with alarm, a timer for timing long exposures, plus a precision digital thermometer which measures temperatures and stores a high and low value.
Gossen Digiflash Light Meter
The Digiflash offers all the features of the Digisix meter above, plus the added benefit of taking flash readings with a range of f/2 – f/32 at 100 ISO. The Digiflash is microprocessor controlled and runs on a Lithium battery type CR 2032. The meter weighs approximately 1.5 oz including battery, and comes with a carry case, strap and battery.
Rolleiflex 3.5F Review
This article was originally published in ‘PHOTONpro’ – ‘Kitchen’s Cupboard’ and is reproduced here by kind permission of the Author.
Over the years I have owned four 6 x 6cm Rolleiflexes… and for reasons which at the time seemed sensible. I sold them. Each time, suffering withdrawal symptoms, I bought a replacement, the last being the subject of this article. If I had to settle for but one camera of the many I have owned, it would be a metered 2.8F Rolleiflex.
So what is it about a Rollei that affects me this way? There are several reasons. I like the square 6 x 6cm format, allied to looking down into the viewfinder screen showing, effectively, a bright clear ‘transparency’ of the subject. Eye up against the focusing magnifier, I become absorbed in what I see, almost completely isolated from my surroundings. The psychology of all this is hard to explain to those who use only 35mm SLRs, but in practice, where it matters, it works superbly well.
Quality is apparent as soon as you pick up a Rolleiflex. Even well-used models possess this intangible quality. The results, provided focusing and exposure are correct, are superlative. It is possible to use a Rollei at shutter speeds impossible with a medium format SLR. Why? Minor vibration. Yes, even the best vibrate be it ever so little, as the mirror hits its stops. In practiced hands a Rollei is safe at 1/30th, and usually safe at a 1/15th, which is more than can be said of any roll film SLR.
The Zeiss Planar and Schneider Xenotar were the best lenses available. It has been claimed that the Planar was the better lens, but in my experience this is not demonstrable by taking photographs. The one lens one rarely hears about is the f 2.8 80mm Tessar fitted to the Rolleiflex 2.8A of 1951: Clan Rollei glosses over duff lenses as readily as Clan Leica! This highly unsatisfactory lens, one definitely best left to collectors, was soon replaced by a f 2.8 Zeiss JenaBiometar, the model being designated Rolleiflex 2.8B. 2.8A introduced the new bayonet III filter mount. The Rolleiflex2.8Cof 1953 with Schneider Xenotar restored confidence in the 2.8 series, the 2.8 Zeiss Planar completing the job in 1954.
My ‘model 5’ Xenotar-lensed 3.5F is of 1979 vintage. The focusing hood lifts up at the rear edge, and can be collapsed by squeezing the sides. It can also be removed in order to fit an eye level prism. The focusing screen has a 1cm grid and provides a bright contrasty view of the subject. A split image rangefinder assists precise focusing. A moving mask under the screen provides parallax correction. The front flap holds flat to provide direct vision viewing, with focusing (of an inverted image) via a mirror attached to the flap.
The Synchro-Cornpur shutter provides speeds from 1 second to 1/500th, and enables electronic flash to be used at all speeds, bulbs with the customary 18-20mS delay, plus delayed action. A sliding switch permits multiple exposures. Moving the shutter beyond the 1 second mark brings into view figures in green, doubling from 2 seconds to 60 seconds. These are not shutter speeds. Instead they are all the `B’ setting of the shutter, and act as metered times for exposures longer than 1 second.
The Rollei’s exposure meter is set into the focusing knob, which also bears a unique and most effective DOF indicator: a white band expands and contracts in accordance with the aperture set.
The exposure meter needle and ‘follow’ pointer appear in an arc on top, clearly visible in use. Coupled to both shutter and aperture knobs, it is calibrated for film speeds from 12 ASA to 1600 ASA. Along with their DIN equivalents these appear in the filter factor setting knob, by means of which filter factors up to three stops, can be set in half stop increments. For incident light work a diffuser can be clipped over the meter’s cell.
Film loading is automatic, assisted by a removable back. Thread the leader under the film sensing feeler roller, attach it to the take up spool, close the hack, operate the lever wind forward until it stops. Reverse the lever to cock the shutter and you’re in business. Photographers who also use 120 SLRs can forget the loading sequence and ignore the feeler roller. The result is a wasted film and a feeling of utter foolishness.
The early SLR Hasselblad with its TTL viewing, interchangeable lenses and film magazines, offered versatility the Rolleiflex could not. When Victor replaced his quirky focal plane shutter with time-proven Compur Rapids, then Syncho Compurs to provide flexibility to users of flash, the TLR Rollei’s fate was inevitable.
Despite changes to company name, reorganisation, and the acquisition of Schneider, ownership finally passed from German to Korean hands. The new Samsung-led Rollei puts 35mm first with new £1,500 compacts, and all 6 x 6cm Rolleiflexes are collector’s items for the future.
Rolleiflex 4.0 FW Review
The example of the Rolleiflex 4.0FW I brought with me to the November 2006 Club Rollei meeting attracted a fair amount of interest from members present, and I felt it might be useful to provide some information for a wider audience. This camera seems to have attracted very little coverage in the general photographic press apart from quite a good review in the British Journal of Photography some time ago. In some ways this is surprising, because the introduction of a new TLR model is not exactly commonplace in the 21st century.
It is essentially the same body as the Rolleiflex 2.8GX but fitted with a 50mm f4 Schneider Super Angulon lens (and a matched Heidosmat viewing lens). As such, the exposure metering is the same with the red/yellow/green LEDs in the focusing hood and the sensor in the viewing lens. Flash synchronisation is ‘X’ type only for electronic flash via the traditional socket on the lens panel or using the ‘hot shoe’ adjacent to the focusing knob. In the latter case, through the lens flash sync. can be obtained by using a suitable flashgun such as a Metz 45CL4 and a SCA 356 adaptor.
Finish of the camera largely follows Rollei TLR tradition, but the leathers are a dark brown type rather than the more usual black or grey. How does this model compare with the previous 1961 Wide Angle Rolleiflex? Well, I have been using mine on a regular, but not intensive, basis for 18 months or so now and have found it generally very satisfactory. The metering is a very considerable improvement on the rather fiddly, uncoupled meter of the earlier model. Apart from this, the operational use of the 4.0FW is almost identical to its predecessor. There appears to be little practical difference in performance between the current Schneider lens and the Zeiss Distagon previously used, but although the Schneider is claimed to have a focal length of 50mm as compared with 55mm for the Zeiss there is no discernible difference in the field of view and I suspect both are in the 52-53mm range. Presumably one manufacturer chose to ‘round down’ and the other to ‘round up’.
Bosham Sailing Club, Rolleiflex 4.0FW, Fuji RHP III
Film loading is the same as for the Rolleiflex 2.8GX or the Rollei T with winding to a red dot to position correctly for the first exposure rather then the film feeler system. The focusing hood is simply the standard 2.8GX type but with the rear ‘eye hole’ not punched through so that there is no sports finder facility. This arrangement avoids the considerable cost of the special optical sports finder used on the earlier Wide Angle model. I have found it no drawback as a pentaprism (new type or old type) can be fitted for eye level use on the odd occasions this is required.
Like the 2.8GX, the 4.0FW does not offer the option of using a Rolleikin or the optical flat glass. The lenses have the identical Bayonet IV fittings to the earlier wide angle model, so all accessories are interchangeable. Rollei have reintroduced a slightly shallower version of the lens hood (which allows the ERC to be closed with it in situ). Neither Rollei nor any other German maker, so far as I am aware, is now manufacturing the Bayonet IV filters, but this is no problem as SRB Film Services of Luton can produce them to order in just about any colour or strength.
Bosham Church from Quay Meadow, Rolleiflex 4.0FW, Fuji RHP III
There is a smart black leather ERC for the 4.0FW which will fit the earlier camera equally well because both have the same centrally positioned scissor strap mountings on each side. It could also be used for the similar Rolleiflex 2.8E2 but will not fit the Rolleiflex 2.8F well due to the 2.8F’s filter dial. So far, the only problem with the 4.0FW has been the fact that the brown leathers are prone to damage and thus the new appearance does not last long (whereas the more usual black leathers generally stay good for years). Perhaps I would more truthfully say this is the only ongoing problem – when received from Robert White, the film transport was wrongly set up so that the first exposure did not occur until the film was halfway through the camera. Whilst RW’s were very helpful, it took the UK repairer, Johnsons Photopia, the best part of three months to decide they could not carry out the warranty repair and send the camera to the factory who promptly fixed the fault!
TLRgraphy 