Rollei 35AF, the world’s newest premium point-and-shoot film camera, should be ready for sale by the “end of September.”
If you spent any time on the internet this week, you must’ve seen reviews, brags, and complaints about the new Pentax 17 half-frame film camera. The fanfare was so loud, it drowned other photography releases, like Fujifilm’s newest Wide camera.
The hype over Pentax 17 is admittedly deserved. It’s the first film camera made in decades by a major manufacturer. However, Ricoh/Pentax aren’t the only trailblazers this year. Last week, I reviewed the first colour film by a major film manufacturer (not Kodak/Fuji), Phoenix 200: analog.cafe/r/harman-phoen…. And today, we’ve got a date, a few more photos, and some finalized technical details of the first premium compact point-and-shoot camera: Rollei 35AF.
Rollei 35AF is built from the ground up by a well-known Hong Kong manufacturer, MiNT, who’s been selling instant film cameras for about a decade. Gary Ho, MiNT’s founder describes this project as one of the most challenging things he’s done. Whereas the images of the product and the images it’s taken are truly impressive.
Rollei35 has opened the presale waitlist here: rollei35af.com/
Totally. Improving upon vintage cameras we had in the film heyday AND beating used gear price is a tall order. Still, a warranty and just being able to get one at a camera store (not eBay) may be a huge deal to some. I certainly had reservations about buying my first vintage camera!
We now know what the new Pentax half-frame film camera looks like! It’s the first 35mm film camera from a major manufacturer in over a decade.
PentaxRumors.com recently shared a photo of a camera that Ricoh Imaging has been teasing since early 2023 (analog.cafe/r/film-photogr…).
The photo doesn’t show the manual film advance Pentax leaned on in almost every teaser of the camera (analog.cafe/comments/8ub8). But there’s a lot that we can learn from it already.
The viewfinder confirms that it will be a half-frame camera, and the built-in flash is a nice touch. Many vintage half-frame cameras (analog.cafe/search?for=hal…) did not have a built-in flash, making them difficult to use in subdued light.
I’m happy to see a DOF calculator for better zone-focusing accuracy (you can brush up on it here: analog.cafe/r/how-to-zone-…).
The 25mm 𝒇3.5 lens is an approximately 35mm full-frame equivalent, so we can expect a wide angle of view and easy zone focusing with a larger DOF.
𝒇3.5 is a good max aperture for a camera like this; recall the new Ektar H35N, which is 𝒇8 (analog.cafe/r/kodak-ektar-…) — which is one of the widest-apertured half-frame cameras made in recent years.
Arrived here via a link from Canny Cameras. Long time photographer, I was using Lomo cameras before Lomography ever existed. Always glad to support analogue (and vintage! digital) communities.
Film is for creating emotion, the grain hiding the precision but representing the world in a human analog way. You can digitally sample all you want but you can never recreate the emotions in a print, or even a scan of a negative.
True. Doing that for the next film stock comparison (there’s something scheduled for Thursday June 20th). Many of the photos here were taken in the evening light which can be dynamic. We did try our best to ensure there were no visible changes in brightness or colour temperature between the takes.
Thanks for this, I’ve always wondered what the difference between the two is. For a portrait test, it may be better to use a studio strobe so you can consistently control the the light and it’s temperature, outdoor lighting can changes slightly in the time it takes to swap a back.
@grainydays Jason demonstrates how a popular but controversial “rule” helps him make good exposures on expired film.
“The Rule” dictates that you should over-expose your colour-negative film by 1 stop for every decade it’s been expired. Not everyone agrees with this prescription, but Jason showed that it worked (at least in his experience).
For example, an ISO 200 colour-negative film that expired in 1994 is 3 decades past its prime so it should be metered like ISO 25 (200 — 1stop = 100 — 1stop = 50 — 1stop = ISO 25).
Jason takes “The Rule” a little further by suggesting to add 1/2 stops for every stop the film stock is faster than ISO 400.
So, an ISO 800 colour-negative film that expired in 1994 should be metered like ISO 100 — (1 × 1/2stop) = ISO 66, which can be rounded to ISO 50.
For black-and-white film, Jason suggests over-exposing by 1 stop for every 20 years past its expiry date.
Finally, the expired slide film should be shot at box speed and prayed for, which seems to have worked out for Jason as well. However, he did show some bad results when he tried to cross-process Kodak Ektachrome 64T in C-41 chemicals.
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