The Film Retriever

Pretty little thing This is a review of the Olympus 35 DC rangefinder. After i shot a film with it, i realized that it needed a CLA, so i will come back to it in the future and add a long lasting impressions section to this post. You know when you are going to have a good day - you walk down the street to go to your local car boot sale and you find a one pound coin and then you go to the sale and you find a nice Olympus 35 DC for £2. The previous owner stated that the camera belonged to his father, used it a few years ago before switching to digital and all pictures came out fine. So i thought.... yea why not, lets not haggle on this one. There were plenty of 35mm fixed lens rangefinder from Olympus during the 60's - too many to remember - all sold with beautiful Zuiko lenses. The Olympus 35xx series peaked with the 35SP during the late 60's. The 35SP was succeeded by the 35RD - Olympus dropped the spot metering and the 7 elements lens was scaled down to...

This is a quick review of the Konica Autoreflex T (my variant is the T2). This is a thrift shop find - i paid a bit more than i usually am willing to pay but it looked in so good condition so i ended up buying it. There are four variations of this camera, all of them look pretty much the same but they are updates of the original T which went out in 1967, one offering hot shoe, the other multiple exposures, the last one having a split microprism etc. The T2 reviewed here is virtually an T with a shutter lock and a redesigned shutter button. Now, don't confuse the T-line with the A-line which is the more economical line with certain features being removed. There is also the original Auto Reflex (two words) which is the firs AE SLR camera and a very different beast altogether - offers also half frame. After the final incarnation, the T3N came the TC-line and others that are very different cameras. First impressions are mighty good - this is a very heavy camera, ve...

The Zuiko 35 f/2 This is a small review of the Zuiko 35 f/2, the black sheep of the Zuiko family. I got this lens relatively cheap as it is in a beaten up cosmetic condition but the glass is in excellent shape and clean so I decided to hand in my hard earned cash and bring it back home with me. There are a couple more posts I have made about the Zuiko lenses, one can be found here (The Zuiko lenses) and one here (Zuiko Silvernose 50 f/1.4 Vs Zuiko "Made in Japan") - have a look there to see if you find anything interesting regarding this line of lenses. The Zuiko 35 f/2 has a relatively bad reputation on the internet. It is not that it is a bad lens, it is more the fact that it suffers (according to the reviewers) from artifacts - mostly chromatic aberrations- that are very prominent when you use digital cameras. The thing with this lens is that it was produced as a lens to use in low light situations. Remember, OM cameras had shutter speeds up to 1/1000 s...