Rollei Rolleimagic

Put a Rolleimagic next to a Rolleiflex Automat and you understand why collectors argue about it to this day. The Automat is the camera every working photographer of the 1950s wanted, fully mechanical, fully manual, the standard against which other 6x6 twin-lens reflexes got measured. The Rolleimagic took that same body and bolted a selenium-driven automatic exposure system on top of it, and the Rollei faithful never agreed on whether that was progress. Rollei built it from 1960 to 1962, aiming it at the amateur who wanted the look of a Rolleiflex without learning the exposure triangle.

The idea was that a selenium meter would read the scene and the camera would set the exposure for you, no battery required. On the original Rolleimagic the shutter runs as a program: the meter picks the value and the Prontomat mechanism fires it. The 1s to 1/500 figure is what the shutter is physically capable of, not a range you dial in freely. You frame on the ground glass, the camera commits to a setting, you trip the shutter, and the leaf does its work. The waist-level finder is the classic Rollei experience, bright in good light, the image laterally reversed so that following a moving subject takes practice. Focusing is by knob and ground glass, the slow looking that TLR work forces on you whether you like it or not.

Here is the honest weakness, and it is the reason the Rolleimagic has never commanded Automat money. The automation is the whole point of the camera and the automation is the part most likely to be dead. Selenium cells fade with age and decades of light exposure, and once the cell on a Rolleimagic goes weak the automatic exposure it was built around stops being trustworthy. The original is primarily an automatic camera with only limited override. The Rolleimagic II of 1962 improved the metering and gave the photographer more manual control, which is the version most experienced shooters hunt for. A camera that ties its exposure to a sixty-year-old solar cell is a camera that needs a careful pre-purchase test.

That said, the lens is a real reason to carry one. The Rolleimagic carries a competent Schneider Xenar taking lens, and a clean example is capable of a sharp, well-rendered square negative on the film. Load it the Rollei way, threading the film under the rollers so the start mark trips the automatic frame counter, and you get twelve square frames with that big-negative weight no small format gives you.

Since this is a leaf shutter, flash syncs at every speed, all the way to the top. Take a daylight fill reading with the Zone Light Meter app, set your flash to match, and you can balance a flash against bright sun in a way focal-plane cameras cannot touch. It is also the smart move when the onboard cell is suspect. Read the scene with the app, place your shadows where you want them, and treat the Rolleimagic as the fine mechanical TLR it is underneath the automation rather than leaning on a meter that may no longer be giving you the truth.