www.cjo.info
20150315-0027
This shot shows the lens of the Petri Color 35 collapsed for storage.
The Petri Color 35 has been described (most notably by Stephen Gandy of cameraquest.com fame) as the camera that Rollei should have made instead of their Rollei 35 series of cameras.
It certainly has a unique and extremely usable user interface, perhaps the best user interface of all the super compact 35mm cameras that became increasingly popular during the 60s, 70s and 80s.
All the main controls user controls (aperture, shutter speed and focus are located on the top plate and are easily operable with your eye to the viewfinder. The viewfinder itself has a match needle system for the completely manual exposure and a focus scale.
The exposure meter is coupled to both shutter speed and aperture which makes it easy to set your exposure in either a shutter speed or aperture priority fashion.
Focusing is guesstimate scale focusing. The thing that always puts me off scale focusing cameras is that without any reminder to focus in the viewfinder I usually just forget! But the focusing scale in the viewfinder of the Petri make this far less likely to happen, and the depth of field of a 40mm f2.8 lens mean super accurate focusing isn't necessary.
There are lots of really stylish and/or thoughtful touches like the beautiful rewind crank and the four little metal 'feet' on the base plate which makes it unlikely to get scratched.
There are a couple of things I don't like: the metering system is turned on when you wind on, and off when you take a picture. The is a bit of a problem if you habitually wind on after every exposure to make sure you're ready for the next shot, because if you shoot like this the exposure meter is always on! But this is just a matter of retraining your muscle memory so you habitually wind on just before taking a shot rather than after.
The focusing dial also extends the collapsible lens, which is a bit time consuming to extend, but this doesn't really matter: you just always leave the lens extended most of the time... you only collapse the lens for storage while travelling (and even then only if you really want to.
I also don't like the fact that you have to open the camera back in order to change the battery... tough luck if the battery runs out with a film in the camera!
But despite these minor issues, this is a genuinely likeable and usable small camera.
This is the later "Petri Color 35 D" model... but the only different between this and the earlier "Petri Color 35" model is the very slightly faster top shutter speed (1/300th compared to 1/250th) which in practice make no difference.
20150315-0027
This shot shows the lens of the Petri Color 35 collapsed for storage.
The Petri Color 35 has been described (most notably by Stephen Gandy of cameraquest.com fame) as the camera that Rollei should have made instead of their Rollei 35 series of cameras.
It certainly has a unique and extremely usable user interface, perhaps the best user interface of all the super compact 35mm cameras that became increasingly popular during the 60s, 70s and 80s.
All the main controls user controls (aperture, shutter speed and focus are located on the top plate and are easily operable with your eye to the viewfinder. The viewfinder itself has a match needle system for the completely manual exposure and a focus scale.
The exposure meter is coupled to both shutter speed and aperture which makes it easy to set your exposure in either a shutter speed or aperture priority fashion.
Focusing is guesstimate scale focusing. The thing that always puts me off scale focusing cameras is that without any reminder to focus in the viewfinder I usually just forget! But the focusing scale in the viewfinder of the Petri make this far less likely to happen, and the depth of field of a 40mm f2.8 lens mean super accurate focusing isn't necessary.
There are lots of really stylish and/or thoughtful touches like the beautiful rewind crank and the four little metal 'feet' on the base plate which makes it unlikely to get scratched.
There are a couple of things I don't like: the metering system is turned on when you wind on, and off when you take a picture. The is a bit of a problem if you habitually wind on after every exposure to make sure you're ready for the next shot, because if you shoot like this the exposure meter is always on! But this is just a matter of retraining your muscle memory so you habitually wind on just before taking a shot rather than after.
The focusing dial also extends the collapsible lens, which is a bit time consuming to extend, but this doesn't really matter: you just always leave the lens extended most of the time... you only collapse the lens for storage while travelling (and even then only if you really want to.
I also don't like the fact that you have to open the camera back in order to change the battery... tough luck if the battery runs out with a film in the camera!
But despite these minor issues, this is a genuinely likeable and usable small camera.
This is the later "Petri Color 35 D" model... but the only different between this and the earlier "Petri Color 35" model is the very slightly faster top shutter speed (1/300th compared to 1/250th) which in practice make no difference.