And for seasoned photographers, shooting from a new perspective can be liberating and inspiring.īesides being fun to use, watching someone shoot with a Rolleiflex TLR for the first time is comical, as the mirror reverses the viewfinder image from left to right, frequently causing the photographer to point the camera the wrong way. The advantages of shooting from the waist, or more accurately, the solar plexus, is that people will look more “heroic” as the horizon line and related background areas behind a subject will be shifted higher. Photos by Dan Wagner Rolleiflex TLRs Are Fun and Peculiar That withstanding, most people are drawn to TLRs because they love shooting with a square format camera, and find it fun. Since a 6 x 6 cm square is roughly three times larger than a 35mm film image, little is lost in terms of detail from cropping. TLRs, however, are 6 x 6 cm square format cameras, so if a photographer wants a horizontal or vertical photo, they will shoot square and crop later. Another difference is that most SLRs are oriented a horizontal format and must be rotated to shoot vertically. One of the differences between the two is that the SLR is held at eye level, and the TLR is held at chest level while the photographer looks through a “waist-level” finder. Photographers also look through SLRs, or single lens reflex cameras.

And reflex means that the photographer looks through the lens to view the reflected image of an object or scene on the focusing screen. To start, TLR stands for twin lens reflex. What makes a Rolleiflex TLR so special? Many things.

Macro with rolleiflex tlr