Minox 35gt / Rollei 35s / Olympus Xa

[Sean Chan]

OFTEN USED P&S FROM MY COLLECTION:



MINOX 35GT / ROLLEI 35S / OLYMPUS XA




MINOX 35 GT (USD100.00)

Good things:

Light weight
Easy to hyper-focus (User friendly)
good enough photo quality


Not so good things :

No indication of shutter speed below 1/30
Not as reliable as the others (the electronics and hence the exposure in particular)
Camera too light therefore not easy for slow shutter speed shooting
Hard to find replacement battery


ROLLEI 35 S (USD150.00)

Good things:

Looks the business ! (Nothing beats its classic camera look)
Fully mechanical which means quite reliable
Very good photo quality
Good weight balance and can be hand held to slower shutter speed


Not so good things:

Too heavy to use as a "bring along all the time" camera
Light meter is not so accurate
Hard to find replacement battery
Flash hot shoe at a funny position
No self-timer function


OLYMPUS XA (USD70.00)

Good things:

Have a rangefinder! (amazing)
Easy to find replacement battery
Reliable and meter is accurate

Not so good things:

Only dedicated flash units can be used with the XA
No hyper-focal distance marks on camera



SELF Q & A:


Q: IF I CAN ONLY KEEP ONE CAMERA ,WHICH ONE WILL IT BE?

A: THE ROLLEI FOR SURE

Q: WHICH ONE WILL I CHOOSE TO BE KEPT IN MY EVERYDAY TRAVEL BAG?

A: AR..............THE OLYMPUS XA

Q: WHICH ONE IS THE FASTEST SHOOTER (FROM POCKET TO SHUTTER RELEASE):

A: THE MINOX

Q: WHICH ONE IS BEING USED MOST OFTEN?

A: THE MINOX

Q: WHICH ONE DO I TAKE OUT TO LOOK AT AND PLAY WITH MOST OFTEN?

A: THE ROLLEI

Q: WHICH ONE WILL I RECOMMEND?

A: DON'T BUY ANY !! GAS WITH COMPACTS WILL KILL YOUR BANK BALANCE !!

[Solinar]

Way too funny, but seriously my head over heals love affair with an Oly XA ended the day I picked up my prints made from a Rollei 35S. When the focus is dead on the Rollei delivers. When the focus is off in low light and close in, oh did I miss that puny rangefinder.

[nemjo]

A: DON'T BUY ANY !! GAS WITH COMPACTS WILL KILL YOUR BANK BALANCE !![/quote]

I'm sure, all other type of GAS makes the same in a faster way.

[Jacob]

Sometimes when I can't go to sleep at night I think about stupid projects for getting the perfect camera. One of these silly ideas is to improve my wonderful Rollei 35s with a built in rangefinder, or even an auto focus lens! I haven't looked beneath the top of the Rollei, but at night I imagine that if You remove the lightmeter there would be enough space to fit a rangefinder from, lets say a Ricoh 500G or Olympus RC, that could be operated uncoupled to the lens. Or maybe an old accessory "Entfernungsmesser" from Voigtländer might be squeezed in next to the viewfinder? I know I could keep it in the flash shoe, but that ruins the feeling of the compact boxy body. Or even worse, get the lens and AF device from a Yashica T4/5 but keep the shutter and manual controls of the Rollei... I know, it is probably as easy as adding a modem to a manual typewriter, but it is nice to dream...

Jacob

[Sean Chan]

IMHO, if someone can by some magic squeeze a coupled rangefinder to the Rollei 35s without taking away any of its current function then that Rollei 35s must become the P&S of the Century to die for ! !

Compact, well built, Sonnar 40 / 2.8 HFT coated lens, fully mechincial operation (even the hot shoe).................add to it a coupled Rangefinder???????????


PHOWAR !!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, could that somebody move the Flash shoe to the top as well please !

[zuikologist]

You could try one of the hotshoe mounted rangefinder accessories - although of course the hotshoe is in the wrong place!

[Mark Wood]

If I remember rightly, the hotshoe on the later Rollei 35s (the 35 Classic etc) was moved to the top. (This was presumably to get around the problem of having to use the camera upside down to stop flash portraits looking like something from a horror film!) Unfortunately, the price for these cameras nowadays is very high indeed...