About two weeks ago I bought the Olympus 35DC from Japan. Here I want to share my first impressions of this camera.

I got this camera, because I wanted a compact film camera, which I can easily carry around. There are actually several options available, like Minolta Hi-Matic or Canon G-III. But I found that the Olympus 35DC is one of the smallest and not too expensive. I got mine for about 50 Euro.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

A second reason to get this camera was, that it is a point-and-shoot camera. Sometimes I just don’t want to think too much about shutter and aperture settings. Simply compose and press the shutter button. But also from a technical point I find this camera pretty interesting. The correct exposure is achieved by predefined pairs of aperture and shutter speed.

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View through the viewfinder. At the bottom are the pairs of shutter speed and aperture. When pressing the shutter button, a needle will show the exposure settings. The bright rectangle in the middle is the focusing screen.

There are two versions available. The newer version has a battery check button and light. But to me it looks a bit cheaply implemented, so I decided to go for the older version without that light. The new version has also more plastic parts, which don’t look very appealing to me.

When I opened the parcel and took the camera in my hands for the first time, I immediately liked it. This camera looks and feels great. The size is perfect. Compact but not too small. The build quality is really good. The operation of the camera is very simple and everything works smooth.

A bit troublesome was to find the right battery. Since the 1.3V PX625 mercury batteries are not available anymore, I had to find a replacement. At the moment I use a 1.5V type 625A battery. On several internet forums I read, that the slightly higher voltage might cause wrong exposure readings. Let’s see when the films are processed.

What I like so far:

Very easy to use. Load the film, set the correct ISO and start taking photos.

Perfect size and weight. The camera fits almost into my pocket.

Great look and feel of the camera.

Leaf shutter and film advance are almost silent.

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