Franke & Heidecke, manufacturer of Rolleiflex TLR accessories and 6x6 bodies for Leaf and Sinar, is to lay off all of its employees and terminate all operations by September. Last week, photoscala.de reported that the company’s 131 employees had received notice of the impending layoffs, and the news of the closure has since been confirmed by the British Journal of Photography too. Franke & Heidecke is a company whose roots can be traced back to 1920, when Paul Franke and Reinhold Heidecke founded a workshop in Braunschweig, Germany, called Werkstatt für Feinmechanik und Optik, Franke & Heidecke. The company became famous for its Rolleiflex TLRs, whose production started exactly 80 years ago. The fall of Franke & Heidecke is expected to bring about a massive restructuring of the medium format camera market.

Illustration sourced from the Wikimedia Commons

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