Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/06/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>I think everyone here knows how much I love my Rollei 35, I believe Byron >Rakitzis would say the same about his. I guess I should second that. What an amazing camera. I have a 35S with a broken meter, and I haven't had the urge to fix it. I usually shoot outdoors and guess the exposure: sunny f16 (or f11) rule plus two stops for the shadows. I've even put the Rollei 35 on a tripod, as evidenced by this stupid picture: http://www.rakitzis.com/r35-self.jpg I got B+W 30.5mm filters for it (from B&H): a dark red (8x) and a dark green (3x) from B+W. B&H carries this filter thread in stock!! You can presumably also special order anything they don't have. I've also held filters in front of the tiny lens and shot through them that way. But since 90% of my filter use is with the green filter, it doesn't come up often. I've also used it with Neopan 1600 to shoot candids indoors. Wide open and guessing the distance it's a little hit-or-miss, but my accuracy gets much better with practice: http://www.rakitzis.com/gonz.jpg I don't have an extensive collection of Rollei 35 pictures online, these are just two jpgs I happen to have lying around. The are clumsy scans and don't do the camera lens justice. I'll leave the online Rollei 35 portfolios to the true Rollei 35 fanatics. My Rollei 35 is a kind of second line of defense: when I can't have an M6 with me, I tuck the Rollei 35 into a pocket. I have gotten some amazing pictures with it. For those who don't know, the Rollei 35S has a Zeiss Sonnar 40/2.8, a jewel of a lens. There is even a special folding pressure plate in the camera which seems to tell me that a lot of attention was paid to film flatness. The shutter is a leaf shutter, and makes a tinny little click which may or may not be louder than a Leica. Certainly it vibrates less. The film transport is a little awkward, and I sometimes have frame spacing inconsistencies. But it's a small price to pay for what is an extraordinary combination of optical performance and compactness. Byron.