Rollei Rolleiflex 6006

Rollei built the 6006 in 1983 to clean up after the SLX, the motorized medium-format SLR it had launched in 1976 and started shipping around 1978. The SLX proved the idea but rattled buyers with first-generation electronics, and the 6006 was the body that finally turned Rollei's battery-driven, motor-wound 6x6 into a working studio tool. It anchored the Rollei 6000 system, a German rival to the Hasselblad V, except where the Hasselblad ran on clockwork the 6006 ran on a rechargeable NiCad pack and a motor that wound the film for you.

The body carries no shutter at all. Every Rollei 6000 lens has its own leaf shutter, and the body simply times it, from 30 seconds out to about 1/500 at the top. You lose the high speeds a focal-plane medium-format SLR can reach, but you gain flash sync at every speed up to 1/500, which is the whole reason studio shooters bought into the system. Strobe at full shutter speed, kill the ambient, no sync limit to fight. A daylight-fill reading from the Zone Light Meter app pairs naturally with that, since the leaf shutter syncs wherever you set it and you are free to balance flash against sun on your own terms.

It is heavy and squared-off and feels engineered rather than crafted, all serious switches and right angles, the kind of camera that looks like it belongs bolted to a tripod next to a softbox. The waist-level finder shows a big bright 6x6 ground glass, and the motor advance means you can run through a roll of twelve without lowering the camera from your eye. The built-in meter is center-weighted TTL through the lens, with an off-the-film sensor handling TTL flash, which on a leaf-shutter system is genuinely useful, and the Model 1 will run shutter-priority auto if you let it.

The honest weakness is the battery and the age of the electronics. No charge, no camera. There is no mechanical backup speed, no way to fire a frame if the NiCad is flat or a board has gone soft, and original Rollei cells are long dead, so most surviving bodies run on rebuilt packs or aftermarket adapters. When the electronics fail, and on a forty-year-old motorized body they sometimes do, repair specialists for this system are thin on the ground and not cheap.

Today the 6006 sits in the shadow of the Hasselblad 500-series, and that is unfair. People cross-shop the two and usually pick the Hasselblad for resale and the comfort of a fully mechanical body. But the Rollei costs less, gives you motor drive and TTL metering the Hasselblad never had, and mounts Zeiss and Schneider glass that is every bit as good. It is a studio and portrait camera by temperament, bought now by photographers who want square negatives and built-in winding without paying Hasselblad money. Buy one that has been serviced, with a known-good battery, and it will earn its keep.