Photography and Cameras: Rollei 35 TE

The Rollei 35 is an amazing feat of engineering.  It measures 3 3/4 inches wide, 2 3/4 inches tall and 1 1/4 inches deep.  The retractable lens pulls out to take a picture and can be turned back in when finished.  The Rollei that I have has a Tessar 40 mm f/3.5 lens that can be focused from 3 feet to infinity.  The aperture settings range from f/3.5 to f/22.  Shutter speeds range from "B" to 1/500 sec.  Here is a picture of the Rollei 35 TE.  Notice the quarter coin to give you an idea of how small the camera is.

The incidental light meter is shown between the "Rollei" and the "35 TE".  The Rollei 35 has a large, bright viewfinder but does not have a rangefinder.  The user is supposed to guess how close the image is and set the camera accordingly.  To make it easy for me to focus I built a rangefinder card.  To use it, I close my right eye, open my left eye and align the left edge of the card to the image I want to photograph.  I then close my left eye, open my right eye and see how far the image has moved.  This tells me the distance to the object.  The distances on the card, match the focal distances on the Tessar lens.  Here is a photo of the Rollei 35 rangefinder card.  I had it laminated at BSU copy services.

I'll show a photo that I took with the Rollei 35 TE.