Wow! A guy goes away for a week and things start heating up. Anyway I'd like to thank those that gave me advice a few months back on which compact to supplement my Leica gear with. If you remember my choices were a mint Rollei 35 or an Olympus XA. I figured that with the rangefinder the Oly would be more accurate in focus, but many of you though different and gave a lot of good reasons to consider the Rollei. Well I just got back from a week visiting relative in another part of the country and last night processed and contacted the film I shot. Very impressed. With care only a few shots were misfocussed. The ability to manually control the exposures saved a number of shots and on the whole I am very pleased. Thanks to you I feel I made the correct choice.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), January 23, 2002

Answers

Welcome back Bob! Glad to hear you were only away shooting and not chased off by "bitter" memories!

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), January 23, 2002.

Nice to hear you are pleased with our recommendations. Misfocussing isn't really hard with a rollei, and for critical shots (close, wide open) you can still use an external rangefinder. Nice gimmick, got one made by Wata used for $5, Leica and Voigtlaender made them as well years ago, they are quite common.
BTW, which rollei do you have and how is the meter ? I found the 'analog' meter of my 35s more difficult to use than the electronic one of the 35te, but the lens on the s really stands out, though flares a bit on occasion (click here to see an example).
I also found that people taking the small rolleis not seriously, even less than Leicas, which makes it very suitable for candid photograpy. I even once tried to flash-photograph during a wedding with it, but my Metz flash unit was a bit uncomfortable in handling. The results were great, though (high GN results in higher DOF, which helps when guesstimating).

-- Kai Blanke (kai.blanke@iname.com), January 24, 2002.

Rollei 35 was one of three master designs by Heinz Waaske. The other two cameras are Rollei 16 and Rollei AE110.

Rollei 35 has a large and bright viewfinder, the early ones were made in Germany, later moved to Singapore.

The best Rollei 35 is Rollei 35S with Zeiss Sonnar lens.

I have Rollei 35, Rollei 16, 16S and Rollei E110, all with sharp Tessar lens. However I don't use the Rollei 35 much, because, repair cost is quite high if something goes wrong.

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), January 26, 2002.