The Film Retriever

  The venerable Minolta XE-7  This is a review of the Minolta XE-7. I base this review on the few weeks that it has been with me and two rolls of film that I shot with it. I know I have too many cameras when I have no space to put them in the cupboard. Running out of cupboard space has led me to sell the Olympus IS-1000, a Praktica LLC and the two Minolta SRT-101/100x, together with a few lenses in an attempt to make some space. Soon after, an Olympus 35 ED and a Pentax MV-1 came along which meant that space was limited again. I am trying to be very disciplined and stay away from online shops, car boot sales and charity shops but when this came along, I just couldn't resist. This XE-7 is a charity shop find - they were initially asking for £30 but someone commented that it was not working so they let me have it for £10. The switch was stuck to the Off position, the mirror was up and you couldn't advance the film or press the shutter button.  Having read the manual, I knew...

The little olympus in question  I got this camera as a giveaway something like 7/8 years ago. It had a cloudy viewfinder, fungus on the lens and the camera would be erratic in terms of exposure. Upon arrival I decided that it was too problematic to deal with and it ended up residing in a box with broken cameras (for spare parts) for years. Recently, a friend contacted me to tell me that he found an Olympus 35 ED and whether I was interested in it - thinking that I have nothing to lose, I decided to take apart my 35 ED and see if I can fix it - if that didn't work, well, I'll have another one soon. Olympus produced many nice fixed lens rangefinders from the mid-1960s up until the end of the 1970s. I am not going to go into details as I'm not very knowledgeable about each of those models. What I do know is that the 35ED was a budget model, full auto, aiming to the amateurs who did not want to bother learning the basics of exposure. The camera is equipped with a reliable Seiko...

Pocket Rocket  A bit of an oddball this one - being a folder and a medium format camera, it wouldn't strike me as something that I would be immediately interested in. I am pretty pleased with the Rolleicord I have and in general I am not shooting too many 120 films nowadays but for £10, being described as working well and with a clean Solinar - I just couldn't resist. So, as far as I can tell, my Agfa Isolette II comes from the mid-to-late 1950s. I am not sure of exact dates and honestly, Agfa doesn't come across to me as a company which would meticulously record serial numbers and dates, but you can get a rough idea by looking on the top of the camera: if your Isolette II has a screw in the middle of the wind knob or a depth of field scale on the left, they were made before 1955. Both of these features vanish at around 1955 and the top looks plane like mine with a (useless) ISO reminder. I wish they had kept the depth of field scale. Agfa Isolettes are best known for the 4...