Company History

Wulf Koehler

Wulf was co-builder of the underwater laboratory “Neritica” at Eilat in the Red Sea and had assisted in building “GEO”, a research dive vessel with a special underwater lighting system designed for depths to 1000 meters.

Wulf Koehler started his business in 1965 as a single engineer and named his first products „WKD – Wulf Koehler Darmstadt“. In 1972, he founded his new company “OceanOptics Germany", dedicated to designing and manufacturing underwater camera housings for various companies such as Arriflex, Canon, Hasselblad, JVC-Video- Systems, Leitz, Nikon and Rollei Franke & Heidecke Germany.

Additionally, he produced an underwater documentary film for Anglia Survival Ltd in the UK about the famous wreck of the “Umbria” and was the Underwater Project Engineer for the Hollywood movie

“THE DEEP”.

In 1976, Wulf received a big package from the Rolleiwerke containing a box of blueprints and a letter, in which the management asked him to continue the Hans Hass-Rolleimarin series and produce 100 units of this uw-housing.

Wulf thanked the management for the trust they had placed in him, but declined the order. Instead, he proposed to develop and produce a new uw-housing specifically designed for the Rolleiflex SL66 camera system. This camera had the ideal prerequisites to satisfy all serious underwater photographers to the highest degree.

The management agreed and lent Wulf one SL66 camera together with three different lenses for his design work.

Exactly nine months later, Wulf's new "baby" was born. He presented his new design to the company, which met with the full approval of Rollei's engineers.

After this meeting Wulf started a close business relationship with the Rollei Company in Germany. The first ten housings were delivered within the next year. The housing was published under the name “AQUAMARIN WKD SL66”. At this time, Wulf was not allowed to use the name “Rolleimarin”, due to existing patent rights of the Rollei company.

In 2002, Wulf moved to Sao Miguel-Azores/Portugal and started his new company including a small machine-shop.

A part of his work today is concentrating to repair old Rolleimarin underwater housings and to machine new parts on costumer request.

In September 2018, Wulf was inducted to the “International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame“ with the following words: “As a scientist, engineer, inventor, dive instructor, pilot, photographer, journalist and writer, Wulf Koehler has dedicated a major part of his life to the sea by educating divers, instructing underwater photographers and manufacturing various underwater camera housings”.

Wulf was the head of the photo and film department of the German Divers’ Association (VDST) for many years.

He had supervised the VDST's international photo competitions and created the winning trophy: “Kamera Louis Boutan”.

To add to the list of his successes, Wulf has dived in almost every ocean of this planet, including under the ice of the Antarctica.

Wulf and his various underwater camera products

The Story of the Rolleimarin underwater camera housings

The prototype of the very first underwater housing for the Rolleiflex twin lens camera was never published, it was a design of some engineers working at the „Rolleiwerke Franke & Heidecke in Braunschweig-Germany“ during 1952-53.

Dr. Hans Hass ( the dive pioneer ) had sent a request to the company to build an uw-housing for his twin lens Rolleilfex, which he used for his photography on land.

When Hass saw this first prototype, he had many comments for improvements and from then on, he worked with the engineers in order to develop an acceptable unit that fulfilled all his wishes and requirements.

For instance, the control knobs to adjust f-stop and shutter speed were placed on top of the new housing rather than having them underneath.

The 30° view finder system was implemented, as shown in the left drawing below.

In 1954 Hass was happy with the first copy of the uw-housing, which did not have the name Rolleimarin on the front ring at that time. The company started building this model als for the public market. Over the production years of 1954 to 1981, the design was improved several times.

The last models of the Rolleimarin-IV were built until the end of 1981. 3000 housings were produced starting with serial number 500.

Today, Wulf is working on a design of a special underwater camera housing for his Rollei-Hy6mod2 camera, which is a hybrid camera using film magazines as well as Digital-backs.