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You can still buy the 120 film which fits most Rolleiflex and Rolleicord cameras. Any real camera store will sell it, or hundreds of people sell it mail order. May professional photograhpers still use 120 film, and it will be made for many years to come.
There are are a lot of different Rollei cameras, and all are well made, but the feature set differs. What I would advise getting is a Rolleiflex 3.5F In MY humble opinion, this is the best camera ever made if you want to do all kinds of photography with one non-zooming lens!
People who have never owned a Rolleiflex often think that the Yashica TLRs are almost the same thing, but cheaper. That's like saying that a bottom-line Yashica SLR is almost the same thing as a Nikon F3. It's ture that you can take pretty good pictures with either one, but there really IS a difference! Getting back to twin-lens reflexes, the 3.5F has many, many, expensive little features that just make it more convenient to use. Incidentally, many of those features have been removed from the current Rollei 2.8FX model. Here are some things the 3.5 will do, but a current $3500 2.8FX will NOT:
1) The 3.5F (or a 2.8F, which is the same camera with an 80mm f2.8 lens instead of a 75mm f3.5 lens) has auto film loading. You slide the backing paper through rollers, onto the takeup spool and close the back and turn the crank. All other 120 cameras, including the Rollei 2.8GX and 2.8FX make you keep the back open when you wing the film until some arrows on the paper backing match up with littl moards in the camera. If you are in a hurry to reload, not having to do that can make a real difference.
2) The focusing hood on a 3.5F or a 2.8F has a built-in critical focuser for the sportsfinder. Using the sports finder with these cameras is a much better deal than using a prism. The prism makes the camera big and heavy. With most TLRs, even the current Rolleis, you lose visual focusing if you use the sports finder. The design used on the 3.5F probably cost several dollars extra to build, and they dropped it.
3) The 2.8F and 3.5F have an automatic depth of field indicator, that shows you exactly what will be in focus as you change diapram settings. The current mosels just have a scale. That's still more than you get on a modern camera with a zoom leens, but the older camera's system is better-- and was more expensive to make.
I could go on.
The 2.8GX and 2.8FX do have one big feature that the older cameras lack-- through-the lens light metering. That's not as big a deal as you think, though. The 3.5F has a meter that is very carefully matched to the exact angle of view of the lens. If you take the camera and point it ALMOST at a bare lightbulb on the ceiling, and then move the bulb into the finder, you can see how this works. Just like an averaging TTL meter! The TTL flash metering you get with the current 2.8FX is not duplicated on the 3.5 F naturally, but if you have an automatic flash unit that probably does not matter too much.
You may have wondered why I advise the 3.5F over the 2.8F. That light meter is one reason. They used exactly tthe same meter on the 2.8F, carefully calibrated for a slightly wider angle lens than the camera really has! So people with 2.8F cameras complain that the meter doesn't cover the angle of view correctly. Rollei originally introduced the 3.5F as their ultimate camera. But Hassleblads had a faster 80mm f2.8 lens, and that hurt Rollei sales. So they added an 80mm f2.8 model of their own. It uses bigger filters and accessories. Those and the camera itself are a little bigger and heavier. And the difference between 80mm and 75mm means that there will be a few occasions when you can't step back quite far enough to get everything you want into the pictue with the 2.8F, but youcan with the 3.5F. To get a tighter composition with the 3.5F, either step toward the subject, or just crop the edge of the picture.
The lenses on all of these top-line Rollei TLRs are superb, and you can get closeup sets which give you auto parallax correction. Any of the four models I've mentioned will give great results. But the TTL models are much more expensive. You can get a good 3.5F for under $450.
NOTE! Not all 3.5 Rolleis are really the 3.fF. In fact, most are not. the four cameras I've been talking about all uave either Zeiss Planar lenses, or Schneider Xenotar lenses. So did the 2.8E and 3.5E and their variants, but only the F , FX, and GX models have fully cross-coupled light meters. Meters found on other models are built-in but not totally coupled. And there are many other Rollei cameras with Zeiss Tessar and Schneider Xenar lenses. Those cameras are only about half as expensive. They are well made, but they lack some of the features of the 2.8F and the 3.5F
If you still want more, I'll be happy to tell you at great length just WHY this is the best camera ever for general pheotgraphy with one fixed-focal-length lens. Until the days of high quality wide-to-tele zooms, it was the best camera period, if you did not want to change lenses. --Chris
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