My new favorite 35mm camera

I recently picked up a nice clean Rollei 35S. Ebay purchase, billed as being very clean and adjusted for modern batteries. Came with a manual, case, lens hood, and a battery and easily as clean as I expected. A really nice looking camera. I just picked up the first roll, some Provia 100, and am pleased as can be. Blown away actually that such a small little thing works so well. Colors, sharpness, exposure are all excellent. Yep, this week at least (I can be fickle) its my favorite 35mm camera.
This is my first purchase from this seller but so far so good. Its rolleifanatic35 if your interested.

Congrats on your purchase and on saving a great old camera from the non-use pile.

A great camera!

Jeff

I have one of those available if anyone's interested.

Marc

My Rollei 35 Classic has quickly become one of my favourite cameras too, utterly tiny and the only thing it lacks is of course a way to accurately focus. However, I'm someone who stops down to at least f/8 most of the time, so I can scale focus with ease.

I got Rollei 35SE recently, the shutter speeds 1/60 and 1/15 and lower don't work too well, but I love it. I've to take it apart and lube it up. But I didn't get around to it yet, since I keep loading new roll of film into it all the time.

The guess finder takes a while to get used to and I love Zeiss glass. This lens doesn't disappoint.

I printed out following chart and keep it in my wallet http://tomchuk.com/misc/rf/
It helps me with focusing a lot as wider apertures.

Just test it out and make sure you put in all the parameters correctly.

It seems to work for me:

rr80s+xtol_rescan029.jpg by Jarek Miszkinis, on Flickr

rr80s+xtol_rescan048.jpg by Jarek Miszkinis, on Flickr

Love that second pic, Nuff!

I picked up one of the first Rollie 35's about twenty years ago and it was about 20 y/o at the time. The shutter would stick at the slower speeds so I sent it off for a CLA and it worked great for many years. It had the 40mm f:3.5 Tessar lens and it was very sharp. I used it mostly in B&W to take pictures of my kids and for that it was great. With the leaf shutter and the Rollie flash you could do some nice synchro-sun shots...very versatile camera and I got used to the scale focusing pretty quickly.
I sold it recently to a chap in Australia and I am sure he is getting good use from it.
Enjoy your new camera, they are real gems!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

I've had one for three years and love it.

I forgot. When not in use, keep it in the dark, (a bag, cupboard, whatever). Apparently, this makes the light meters last for ever. Mine is still perfectly accurate.

I bought two "silver anniversary" Rollei 35S cameras in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1988 for about $125 each -- I wanted to use the pair of them for stereo photographs. Sadly, I managed to leave one in the glove box of a Hertz rental, and of course they guys there had no idea where it was when I went back 15 minutes later to retrieve it. Still got the other one, though, and as we all agree the lens is wonderful. Guesstimation focusing is a skill that can be developed, I've found. Great camera.