In the early 70s it was very popular camera with GIs, real cheap in BX at the time. Lots came home from Southeast Asia. I never owned one, but the as recall the images were sharp, good color, contrast. I have a Yashica 50 1.7 in M42, another great performer.
I had one of the original model Electro 35 which my brother bought used and sent from Japan.
I still marvel at the quality of the lens and auto-exposures when looking at old family snapshots with and without external flash.
Used to replace the mercury battery at Radio Shack and remember looking the dates to get the freshest one they had.
I guess there wasn't a lot of call for that particular battery as they usually had a layer of dust on the packaging.
Nice camera if working well and the auxiliary wide and telephoto lenses are fun to play with.
I’ve only put a handful of rolls through mine (an Electro 35G) and only B&W but I was quite impressed by the sharpness and contrast of that lens. I was also pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of the auto-exposure.
Quite a nice lens, I still have to try it with expensive film, perhaps some slide to really see what it can do, but it's probably one of the best fixed rangefinder lenses out there, also helped by a very good metering.
I too had good experiences with this lens. I can’t remember shooting BW with my Electro 35, I used it with color neg and particularly slide film. Exposure was generally spot on. Colors were nice and saturated. Only thing I miss with this camera is manual exposure or at least a display of the exposure time, that’s why I am not using it much since I got a Leica.