WIN LENS reflexes became very popular in the 1930s after Franke and Heidecke launched the Rolleiflex and later the cheaper Rolleicord aimed at the amateur who would have liked a Rolleiflex but couldn't afford it. The Rolleiflex was used by many professionals, and the picture magazines were full of Rolleiflex pictures. Other manufacturers wanted to jump on the bandwagon, but for a long time only Zeiss Ikon and Voigtländer produced anything comparable, the Ikoflex and the Superb.
     Most of the others aimed lower down the market with cameras that looked at first glance like Rollei but were much more cheaply made and cost a great deal less. Some of them were true twin lens reflexes in which the viewing lens focused in conjunction with the taking lens, but the cheapest were really glorified box

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cameras with a fixed viewing lens. On some the taking lens focused by a scale, but the really bottom of the market ones had fixed focus lenses. They appeared again after the war and stayed on the market till the 1960s but gave way to the more compact eye-level camera. I've included pseudo-TLRs here because they look like twin-lens reflexes.
     After the war Micro Precision Products in the UK launched the Microflex and Microcord which were almost identical copies of the Rolleiflex and Rolleicord, and excellent quality, but they never achived the same following. It wasn't till the late 1950s that Yashica launched a whole range of well made twin lens reflexes, the top models of which came very close the Rolleis in performance though, in my opinion, didn't equal them in quality. But they cost consireably less and were excellent value. 
     The big disadvantge of the with the twin lens reflex was the lack of interchangeable lenses. Any changes in focal length had to be made with supplentary add-on lenses, except for the range by Mamiya which had interchangeable lens panels each with its matched taking and viewing lenses, but this was aimed at professionals rather than amateurs. Though it had many devotees the twin lens reflex gradually had to give way to the single lens reflex with a huge variety of lenses to choose from.

IMITATION is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, but I doubt if Franke and Heidecke appreciated the flattery of the TLR Rollei look-alikes from Yashica that flooded on to the market in the 1960s and 1970s.
     The example I’ve got is the 6x6 Yashica-Mat first introduced in 1957, but the Mat part of the name didn’t indicate that it had automatic exposure, it meant that the lever wind film transport stopped automatically at the next exposure without your having to look for numbers in a red window.
     It’s quite a heavy and solidly built camera with a knob on the left hand side that takes the front panel in and out for focusing, and a lever for film winding on the right, just like a Rollei. There’s a depth of field indicator engraved round the focusing knob. Shutter speed and aperture settings are by two knurled flat knobs, one each side of the lens panel, and are seen in a small window just above the viewing lens, very convenient when you’re holding the camera at waist level. The Copal MXV shutter runs from 1 to 1/500 sec plus B, and the f/3.5 Yashinon taking lens stops down to f/22.      Both lenses have bayonet fronts to take filters or lens hoods. Flash synchronisation is either X or M.
The f/3.2 Yashinon viewing lens gives a clear bright picture on the fine Fresnel screen which is divided by thin red lines into twenty small squares to help you get verticals vertical and horizontals horizontal. I find this more helpful than just the four squares on the screen of my old Rolleicord. There’s a large magnifying glass that flips up for accurate focusing, or you can push the front of the hood down to give an open-frame eye-level finder for action shots.
     I’ve had the camera for close on twenty years and had some excellent pictures from it, both print and colour transparencies, and it still works as well as ever. When they were new, the Yashica twin lens reflexes were around half the price of an equivalent Rolleiflex, and you can still pick them up quite reasonably in good working order at camera fairs. If you fancy a TLR they’re excellent value.

ZEISS IKON obviously couldn’t ignore the twin lens reflex market and in 1934 came out with the Ikoflex, a good solid twin lens reflex aimed at the medium price market. But being Zeiss Ikon they had to be different. Instead of the simple and functional box shape of the Rolleis, the Ikoflex had a rounded body with a lens panel having points at the top and bottom. It soon became nick-named the coffee can. The number was 850/16, 850 being the model number and 16 denoting a 6 by 6 cm format. Usually with Z-I, when a new model appeared the model number was updated by one.
     During the 1930s the Ikoflex went through a number of modifications and redesigns with successive numbering, but the numbering and naming went a little haywire in 1939. It started very logically in 1936 with model 851/16 and the name Ikoflex II. This was more box shaped and more like a Rollei. The original 850/16 Ikoflex naturally became the Ikoflex I just as the original Contax became the Contax I. When a new model Ikoflex appeared in 1938 with the model number 852/16 it was called the Ikoflex III, still following normal Z-I procedure. Alles war in ordnung.
     Then the following year came another Ikoflex with the number 853/16, and the comedian in charge of naming decided that this too should be an Ikoflex III. This meant there were two Ikoflex IIIs with different numbers. Alles war nicht in ordnung.
     Why the 853/16 wasn’t named Ikoflex IV no-one seems to know, but it wasn’t. Instead, as production of the 851/16 Ikoflex II had stopped in 1938, the 852/16 was renamed the Ikoflex II and is generally known as the Ikoflex II/III to distinguish it from the original Ikoflex II.
     To crown it all, also in 1939 came another model, similar to the 852/16 Ikoflex II/III but without the eye-level finder. This time, instead of giving it a new model number it was given the same number as the original Ikoflex, 850/16, and named the Ikoflex I. Ordnung seems to have gone right out of das Fenster.
     When I first got my Ikoflex I wasn’t certain quite which model it was. It had to be either an 851/16 Ikoflex II or a second version 850 Ikoflex I. Most unusually, I couldn’t find a model number anywhere on it. I thought it was probably an 851/16 Ikoflex II, but in D. B. Tubbs’ book on Zeiss Ikon it says that the 1936 851/16 Ikoflex II had a Van Albada finder built into the hood, but I’ve seen this only on the 853/16 Ikoflex III. The book also says that the brightwork on the 851/16 Ikoflex II was chromium plated instead of nickel plated.
     Mine hasn’t got a Van Albada finder, just an open eye-level frame finder, built into the reflex hood. I’m also certain that’s what’s left of the plating is nickel, not chromium. There isn’t a serial number on the Novar lens, so I couldn’t get any dating help from that.
Then, at last, I was cleaning the covering and found, very faintly, the model number 851/16 stamped in the leatherette under the lens panel. So it’s an original Ikoflex II, not a II/III, and was made between 1936 and 1938. It’s generally reckoned that Zeiss Ikon changed from nickel to chromium plating about 1935, so I think mine could be an early 851/16 with nickel plating, possibly made in 1935 though the model wasn’t launched till 1936. I’m glad I got that sorted out because it was bugging me.
     I’ve had the camera for some years, and I can’t remember now quite where I got it. I bought it with a jammed shutter, and some previous owner had been so busy with metal polish that the plating was rubbed through to the brass on the nameplate, the focusing scale and the rim of the viewing lens. The leatherette was also a bit tatty on the edges of the back and base, so I wouldn’t have given a lot for it in that condition. I had put it aside and almost forgotten about it.
     Recently I decided to get it out to see what could be done about restoring it. The Klio shutter runs from 1 sec to 1/175 sec, or should have run, but the delayed action gear train was gummed up in the set position so nothing could work. After a strip, clean and lube it’s now working perfectly so I have to decide what to do about the body. Unlike chromium plating, that requires chemicals that aren’t at all nice to handle, nickel plating at home isn’t difficult. A friend has a set-up which produces very decent results, so I might get a kit myself, or take off the brassy bits and get him to replate them. The leatherette on the back has the Zeiss-Ikon logo stamped in it and I’d like to keep that intact if I can, so if I can find some suitable thin leatherette I might try doing a surgical cut and stick job on the edges. If that doesn’t work I’ll recover the whole back. When all this will be, I don’t know, but when I eventually get around to it I’ll let you know how things went.
     I haven’t yet put a film through the camera, but I like the way it handles. It’s got that typically solid, Zeiss-Ikon feel about it. The viewing lens is a Teronar, originally the name of a Contessa-Nettel lens that was dropped as a taking lens after the 1926 Zeiss-Ikon amalgamation. I don’t know if it’s the same type of lens as the old C-N Teronar but it gives a beautifully bright picture on the viewing screen. Focusing is quick and easy with a lever on the left side of the camera. The lever also carries a nice clear depth of field indicator. There’s a magnifier built into the front part of the hood, and the front pushes up out of the way to give you an open-frame eye-level finder that Zeiss-Ikon called a sports finder.
     A sliding catch releases the combined back and base that hinges down for loading the film. The film spool is carried in a chamber at the bottom of the camera and the film passes up over the film plane to a take-up spool at the top. In the base cover there’s a red window with a shutter to prevent fogging panchromatic film, but you use this window only to wind on to number 1. As it travels up out of the base compartment the film turns a spring-loaded roller. This is connected to an exposure counter in a window in a boss placed conveniently at the top of the body on the right hand side. When you’ve got to number 1 in the red window you close the shutter on the back and slide a small button on the side of the body to set the exposure counter to 1.
     The camera was an export model because all the writing on it is in English – well, almost all of it. On one of the side flaps of the hood there’s an exposure calculator table for ‘Ultra Rapid Film in sunshine, May to August from 9am to 3pm’. There are also notes about a conversion factor for cloudy sky and for other times of the year. The bit that isn’t quite in English is that May is spelled Mai, and October is spelled Oktober, both being the German spelling. The spellings are quite understandable in English, but it’s unusual for the normally meticulous Z-I to have slipped up like that.
     Of course, the table’s not a lot of good unless you know what sort of speed ‘Ultra Rapid’ film had in the 1930s. If we use the ‘sunny sixteen’ guide then on a sunny day in summer the exposure for 100 ISO film should be 1/100 sec at f/16. The table doesn’t go up to f/16, but for landscapes with a light foreground from May to August it suggests 1/100 sec at f/11. That’s one stop down from f/16, so it would seem that the film speed was about 50 ISO. That ties in quite nicely with a table of film speeds that I found in a late 1930s edition of The Modern Encyclopaedia of Photography which gives the speed of Zeiss-Ikon ‘Fast’ panchromatic film as 27 degrees Scheiner. It’s very difficult to make accurate comparisons between different methods of measuring film speeds, but in an old copy of Amateur Photographer I found a comparison chart which suggests that the pre-war German Scheiner speeds were about equivalent to adding 1 to the British Standards film speed number. It gives 28 BS speed as equivalent to 50 ASA (or ISO if you like). I checked with a meter on a sunny day in June, and that gave an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/11, so the table on the Ikoflex gave a useful guide for users of the time.

I WAS indulging in my usual weekend pastime of rooting around secondhand and junk stalls in a market and saw at the back of a stall a rather tatty and faded canvas camera case. It was just like hundreds of other cases for cheap box cameras, and its condition made me suppose that inside, as I’d found many times before, was yet another cardboard box camera probably the worse for wear. Then as I was sitting in the market café having a cup of tea something kept niggling in the back of my mind telling me that I ought to go back and have another look. It’s a sort of sixth sense that, if you’re an inveterate and unrepentant junk stall prowler like me, you develop over the years.
     I went back, and as soon as I picked the case up I knew there wasn’t a cardboard box camera inside. It was far too heavy. Inside I found a twin lens reflex with the name Reflecta, one that I hadn’t come across before. I was intrigued, and looked at the tie-on price label. The price was about the same as you would expect to pay for a decent box camera so I bought it without really examining it very closely except to note that it had a Prontor II shutter and that both

1930s Reflecta, in need of cosmetic attention.

lenses focused together so it was a genuine TLR and not just a box camera pretending to be one.
     Back home I tried to find out who made it and found that it was made by the old established company Welta Kamerawerke in Freital, though one source said it actually made by Kamerawerk Tharandt in Freital and sold by Welta. Whether or not there were other links between Welta and Tharandt I have no idea. The name was spelled Reflecta in the 1930s and Reflekta after the war when Welta found itself behind the Iron Curtain and became VEB Welta. After the war the camera went through various model numbers with a variety of lenses and shutters and was also shipped out from the DDR to be sold as an ‘own brand’ camera with names like Peerflekta and Triumfreflex. I gather that it was also sold before the war by Wirgin in Wiesbaden as the Reporter so it seems to have had a number of guises and aliases.
     So after that, what’s it like? Well, it’s all metal, reasonably well made but not top quality by any standards. The two lenses and the shutter move back and forth for focusing when you move a lever on the front and the release is the usual lever on the side of the Prontor which runs from 1 sec to 1/175 sec. The cocking lever is at the top, which makes it a little fiddly to cock the shutter till you get used using just your fingertip. The taking and viewing lenses appear to be the same, f/4.5 anastigmats, which probably means triplets, labelled Nedar which is a name I’ve not come across before and isn’t mentioned in Neil Wright’s Vade Mecum so I’ve no idea who made them. The picture size is the usual 6x6 cm, but there are three, yes. three, red windows in the back. It’s the only camera I’ve come across with three. The bottom one is marked 1,3,5,7; the middle one 2,4,6,8 and the top one again 1,3,5,7. I can only assume that these were used before the numbers 1 to 12 became a standard on 120 backing paper. The back opens with a simple spring catch. When I first opened it I wondered how you got a film loaded in it, then I found you have to pull out the winding key and lift the whole inside out, just like a box camera. The shutter’s a little slow on its two slowest speeds but it works well and I haven’t taken it apart to clean and lube it. The next stage will be some cosmetic attention.

FRANKE & HEIDECKE'S success with the Rolleiflex TLR soon had other makers wanting to jump on the bandwagon. Voigtländer’s answer in 1933 was the Superb with a quite similar specification and deserving its name. At the same time someone at Braunschweig had the bright idea of extending the market downwards with a cheap camera so that people who looked with envy at the expensive Superb or Rolleiflex could have a lookalike that they could afford.
      This, also launched in 1933, was the Voigtländer Brillant, often mis-spelled Brilliant.

The later plastic Brillant with non focusing viewing lens.

I assume the name came from the large plano-convex lens used in the big brilliant viewfinder, which on lower-specification models didn’t focus, but it was also a brilliant idea. It founded a range of Brillants that sold readily in large numbers right through to the 1950s.
      Inevitably over the years the Brillant grew up and the specification was extended with top of the range models movimg more and more upmarket. It was fitted with a variety of lenses and shutters from an f/7.7 Voigtar in a simple three speed or even two speed shutter right up to a Heliar in a Compur Rapid. Coupled focusing of the two lenses was added to make it a true twin-lens reflex. These, naturally, became known as the Focusing Brillants though as far as I know this name was never on the camera. Early models were made with metal pressings, and about 1937 or 1938 this was changed to a moulded black Bakelite body. All the model Brillants were well made, as befitted Voigtländer, and met the needs of those who wanted a simple camera good enough to produce pictures that would enlarge if needed to fit in a photo frame on the sideboard up to the ‘serious’ amateur who still couldn’t afford a Rollei or a Superb. I have examples of the two non-focusing Brillants, one in metal and one in plastic, but the metal one needs a lot of cosmetic attention.

KODAK produced a number of what were basically box cameras with a large reflecting non-focusing viewfinder that looked like twin-lens reflexes, including several models called Duaflex. This is a Duaflex II from the 1950s or 1960s. The lens is 72mm Kodar f/8 with a choice of f/8, f/11 or f/16 by a lever under the lens. It focuses from infinity down to 3.5 feet. The shutter is a simple single speed, about 1/50sec, with a self-return taking button on the side and a choice of Instantaneous or Bulb by a small sliding knob on the other side. There's a two-pin connector for a Kodak bulb flashgun. It takes 12 pictures 6x6cm on 620 film, and the take-up spool comes out on a spring loaded hinged carrier for easy loading and unloading. The viewfinder, under a lift-up hood, is bright and clear, very much better than the small reflecting viewfinder on a box camera, but is only 3.5cm square, not full size. There's a link between the wind-on knob and the taking button to prevent double exposures, but this works only when it thinks it will. The body is made from black plastic with a simulated leather grain and very 1950s styling in black and aluminium on the front.

MY Rolleicord was a junk box find at a camera fair. When I picked it out the poor thing looked very sorry for itself, obviously very well used and then neglected. It was filthy dirty, the black paintwork was chipped and rubbed, the leather was peeling from the sides and missing from the front panel, and the speed selector lever and the cock and taking lever were bent. But it was complete, the shutter quite surprisingly worked well on all speeds and the focusing rack was smooth. The box was marked 'any item £2', so I bought it. When I examined it more closely at home I found some light scratches on the lens from careless cleaning but they aren't very serious and although I haven't tried a film through it I wouldn't expect them to do any more than just take the edge off the contrast. The rest of the camera's cleaned up quite nicely, and with the black paint touched in and some new leatherette on the front panel it will look quite presentable.
     I checked on the very comprehensive website of the Global Rollei Club and found that I'd got a Rolleicord IIb of which 16000 were made between February 1938 and January 1939. The lens is a Zeiss Triotar triplet 7.5cm, f/3.5 and it set in a Compur which runs from 1 sec to 1/300 sec. As is usual on Rolleis with the shutter and both lenses covered by a figure of eight housing the speed and stop are adjusted by levers on the side of the housing and there's a combined cock and take lever at the bottom of the housing. Move it to the left to cock the shutter and to the right to make the exposure. The taking lens has a bayonet round it to take a filter or lens hood. The IIb wasn't originally synchronised for flash, but at some time a co-axial flash socket has been added to the front panel. It's very neat and looks professionally fitted. There's no indication whether it's M or X synch, but when I looked in the back and fired it at the fastest speed the inside lit up from the flash through the lens, so I assume it's X. In my photophernalia collection I had a Rollei bayonet fit lens hood, so this now sits on the front. I'm not sure it it was made for the UK market or not. Probably not as the exposure table on the back is entirely in German. Although the focusing knob has Made in Germany written it in English it is scaled in metres. All the Rolleicords illustrated on the Global Rollei Club's website have a disc of black leather or leatherette on the face of the focusing knob. If mine had this originally the words Made in Germany wouldn't have been visible.