January 2023

The venerable Linhof Master Technika is a highly respected, highly regarded camera that represents a significant investment for its owners. It seems clear that they were designed and intended for professionals who don’t generally need to be protected from themselves. They are also extraordinarily poorly documented by Linhof, with owner’s manuals that, quite bluntly, contain misinformation and what I might call “errors of omission” — stuff important enough that it should have been mentioned, but wasn’t. That all might have worked fine if we still lived in a time when you bought your film camera from a local dealer, with real human beings there who could demonstrate and explain what (and what not) to do, why, and how. But we don’t live in such a time, and so the buyer of a Linhof Master Technika (or prior Technika models) is left to their own devices, free to screw things up with impunity, then blame the camera and its design. Some of that blame might be justified, but if you’re new to the Technika, let me — as someone who’s made multiple, expensive mistakes — explain how you can (and should) avoid them.

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