Rolleiflex 2.8D

The 2.8D is the thirteen-month bridge between the 2.8C and the metered 2.8E: August 1955 to September 1956 by en.wikipedia’s K-code table, just over 20,000 cameras by antiquecameras.net’s count from Prochnow, with the same choice of Schneider Xenotar or Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm f/2.8 as the C and the same Compur Rapid MXV shutter running 1–1/500 s with M and X synchronisation. The Xenotar camera was listed slightly below the Planar, a pattern antiquecameras.net says continued on the E. What changed is on the front: the aperture and shutter dials are now coupled on a locking light-value scale, so that once an exposure value is set either dial moves the other to hold it, and the diaphragm has five blades where the 2.8C’s had ten. Both details come from Blue Moon Camera’s museum page as it appeared in search, with Camera Legend’s account of the uncoupled 2.8C dials agreeing from the other side; no factory document was found.

Those two changes are why the 2.8D is cheaper than the camera before it and the camera after it. Collectors pay for the C’s round iris and for the E’s meter and Synchro-Compur, and the D has neither; what it has is the Planar at the price of a 2.8C body without the premium. Josh Solomon’s six months with a 1955 Planar camera on Casual Photophile is the one full review found, and it reads as a conversion: he began sceptical of the cult and ended calling the Planar “one of the finest lenses ever made for medium format”, sharp enough stopped down for landscape and creamy enough wide open for portraits, balanced rather than over-sharpened or over-saturated. The body he found small and solid, its controls working like “fine, Swiss clockwork”, the speed and aperture dials under the thumbs and the focusing knob large; the leaf shutter he found stable and quiet enough for 1/15 s hand-held and for discreet work.

The drawbacks he lists are the TLR’s, not the model’s: a reversed image that makes moving subjects hard to follow, parallax close up, and a fold-out sports finder he calls “clunky at best and useless at worst” because its parallax error is worse still. Loading is “a little finicky”, the leader having to pass under the first roller before the automatic counter engages. He put a good example at about $800–900 in 2017. Nick Clark’s three years with a 1956 camera on 35mmc, found by search but not read, is the other long-term account. ja.wikipedia gives the model a fresh serial block, 1600000–1620999, after the 12xxxxx numbers of the A through C — 21,000 numbers for a run of just over 20,000, which for once fits — and the 2.8E takes over at 1621000.