The Rollei 35S is a wonderful camera. I have owned most of the various models of the 35 and it was an S that I kept, as a glove-box camera. When I am on a trip, I generally put the 35S and a pair of Zeiss 10X, 25mm binoculars into the glove box just in case ... The 35S takes the now very-hard-to-get PX625 battery but there are workarounds. Other than the light metering, the camera is entirely mechanical.
An odd note. One of my distant ancestors built a pub in downtown Bedford City, Pennsylvania, around 1762. He was John Fraser and his pub was, 'Fraser's Tavern' . (My people were quite happy under the English Crown and were quite loyal until the British started paying the Native American Agrarian Reformers to kill off the mountain settlers. My people, being mountain settlers, objected to this and so I can claim the heritage of a Son of the American Revolution, as two of my ancestors served as scouts for militia units who disagreed with the American Indian policy of killing off hardscrabble farmers.) In 1995, my son and I drove to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for a thousand reasons, as I had grown up in the 'burgh, back in the day. We stayed in the motel which was the place where the cast and crew for NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD seem to have been quartered back in '66. On the way home, my son insisted on stopping at Bedford to see Fraser's Tavern. I was reluctant to stop, as we had, in Robert Frost's words, 'miles to go before I sleep' but, what the hey, we popped off the Pennsytucky Toll Road and drove to the center of town. Oh, I'd been shown the location by Dad back in the Longago, and we did find it. Then Ian wanted to go into the place, which had burned down a few times so the building was a relatively new one built in the 1880's. We went inside and met the woman who owned the place. She was delighted when I told her that we were Fraser descendants. She cheerfully led us into the basement and I was able to shoot some Kodachrome slides of the foundation stones with the basic Rollei 35 I used at the time, coupled to a basic Vivitar flash. Wow! I later Ilfochromed the slides and the amount of detail is amazing.
That building later burned down, as well, and, so far as I know, the property is now a bare lot marked by a large excavation defined by the foundation stones laid back in 1761 or so under the beady eye of my longfather. Ian and I were the first Fraser descendants, or so it seems, to have visited these stones in at least a century, though Dad's father once told Dad that he had been there in 1896, when he was aetate sixteen.
So, a bit of my own family lore and a bit of Rollei quality combined to preserve a record of the place. Those interested in learning more about John Fraser are encouraged to view that 1947 Cecil B. DeMille vehicle, UNCONQUERED, in which Ward Bond plays him. Yup, guys, one of my ancestors made it onto the screen. I may be unique on this List in that regard. <he grins>
And, yes, the Rollei List was very much in existence back in 1995 and yrs. trly. was running it. We had twice as many members then, I believe, as we do know and we were a lot more active, as Carlos and Richard Knoppow and Eric and the rest of you had not yet answered the questions we had. That 1995 jaunt ran for three days and I came home to find something on the order of a hundred Rollei List messages.
Thank you, kind Rollei Folk, for being there! The 3.5/40 CZ Tessar is an amazing lens, and the 2.8/40 Sonnar is even more satisfactory. Sharp, tonal, and effective. But, then, when did Rolleiflex ever go second-class?
Marc msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir! --- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
