what are your experiences with the rollei 35?

Ces1um said:

Well, I'm hearing a lot of repeat answers here. Lovely camera, nice lens, too fiddly to use, zone focusing is a crapshoot at wider apertures. Maybe I'll rethink buying one. .

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Hello Ces, time for my opinion. I used a 35S from 1981 to about 2000. Nice lens: the 2.8 Sonnar: YES. I can't comment on the Tessar. Too fiddly to use: Not for me. I just don't understand the trouble some people had with handling or dropping it. I took mine on hiking trips many times. Read the instruction manual and don't be ham-fisted about it. Sure, it is not as rugged as a Nikkormat, but it is not intended to be. Focus is a crapshoot: Nonsense. With a 40mm lens, you should be able to do quite well. Even the famous Olympus Trip 35 is zone focus. Here are two tripod-mounted Kodachromes from 1982, taken with a 35SE that I gave to my sister. She may still have it somewhere. The huge advantage of the Rollei 35 over the Olympus Trip 35 is you could select shutter speeds and apertures; no automatic nonsense at all.

I've owned both the Sonnar and Tessar versions. The Tessar version was sharper in my experience. Great cameras to use and are bullet proof.

Ces1um said:

I tried! Had one lined up on kijiji but was given the runaround and eventually the seller said she "couldn't find it anymore". Tried to buy a kodak brownie hawkeye as well of kijiji but the seller failed to show up. In the end I went in a complete opposite direction and bought a harman titan 4x5 pinhole camera. Pretty radical departure I know.

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Definitely different! But sounds like fun and no miniscule frame spacing to deal with!

John Koehrer said:

Does the lens rotate 180 degrees while it's collapsed?

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I haven’t tried, will give it a go, would be awesome if it did. From memory (away from the camera currently) I don’t think it does but I’ll take a closer look.

I agree focus is in general pretty easy with faster film and tbh many of my favourite shots with it aren’t perfectly sharp from motion/focus anyway, i find it a nice camera for capturing a feeling of a place/time/people etc.

I have owned several little Rollei 35's and still have two. One German with a Tessar and one Singapore also with a Tessar. I guess you can tell which lens I prefer. I think the Tessar seems to have better micro-contrast over the Sonnar, but that's just my feeling. That Farmall tractor above looks just like the one I learned to farm on. It was an old F-20 model and you surely built up your arm muscles trying to steer that baby. It was a snorter and did a good job for as old as it was. Ahhhhh, the good old days! JohnW

FWIW the lens is definitely not able to be rotated to switch the metric/imperial focus scale. Tried every way I can think but no dice

From my viewpoint the faster Sonnar lens was an advertising ploy with no practical benefit in actual picture taking. With guesstimating focus the Sonnar has too little depth of field wide open. The excellent Tessar has always served me well. With wrist strap and weight of camera, sharp pictures are possible using very slow shutter speeds .