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Rollei XF 35

Cute little thing!
This is a review of the Rollei XF 35, a camera that i bought in a carboot sale and stayed with me for a few weeks before deciding to pass it on.

The Rollei XF35 came out in the now distant 1974. It followed an increasing trend of fully automated cameras like the Olympus 35DC (reviewed in my blog), the Minolta H-matic or the Petri Computor II just to name a few with fast lenses and compact dimensions. The Rollei XF 35 was an affordable camera made to supplement the already very popular 35-series. In the early 1980's it cost around $60 almost half the price of the more prestigious siblings.

One thing that you notice when you pick up this camera is its light weight and small dimensions. It is smaller than the Olympus 35 DC and lighter. Main selling point for this camera is the lens, it is a Sonnar design, 5 elements in 4 groups and multicoated, a lens of honorable background and well regarded in the photographic industry. I shot half a roll of film for testing purposes with this camera and I was impressed with the quality of the lens.
The Olympus is a bit bigger but significantly heavier.
The camera offers auto-exposure and Bulb mode, both selected by a small switch on the bottom of the lens mount. This is a camera for good light conditions, shutter speed goes down to 1/30 sec for f2.3 - roughly the equivalent of the light in a church or museum with a 400ISO film (I did it that's why i know) which is good enough for me or street work. The lightmeter is good, it originally used the outlawed PX625 mercury cell but i used the readily available LR9 which gives a bit higher voltage but the exposures were good, no issue with that.

On the door and inside, plastic seems to be less reflective
A couple of things that i didn't like: The film rewind button protrudes way too much. Also only up to 400 ISO film which i find it limiting. No exposure compensation although i suppose you can use the ASA dial for that.
The A/B switch on the bottom
This camera seems to attract a lot of negative criticism on the internet regarding its plastic construction. Well, sure, it is not a Leica but neither is the Olympus Mju-II (Epic) or the Yashica T4 and they cost twice the money. Another issue is that the rangefinder of these cameras seem to be getting out of alignment - in my sample the horizontal alignment is fine but the vertical seems to be tiny bit off - in any way it does not affect focusing accuracy.
The XF35 is a small camera
When it came to pictures, the camera delivered the goods. Light meter is accurate and the lens is excellent. I believe that this lens is performing better than the Mju-II (epic) lens in terms of sharpness although that will be difficult to prove. Overall i was very happy with the performance of the camera with back light, as expected the contrast ended up being low but still the results are more than acceptable.
Despite the sun being inside the frame, the lens did very well (click for bigger)
The camera gave nice results even wide open - this is a picture taken in the local museum. smooth out of focus and plenty details on the girl on the foreground.
The lens is excellent performer (click for bigger)
Conclusion
This is a camera that has received a lot of negative criticism on the internet due to it's plastic construction but when it comes to delivering a picture, the lens is fantastic. I easily place this lens among the best i have used on P&S cameras. Prices on the internet remain low, if your sample is in good condition and you don't have the tendencies to throw cameras on the floor, you will be very pleased with the results.

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