Yesterday I was walking down an upscale flea market in the Old City. My intention -honest- was just to get some photos, as proved by a folder I was carrying. I actually took some photos before fate intervened.
Passing by a stall I saw an Olympus 35 SP on display, and stopped to look it around. The camera seemed in good shape, clean lens, everything worked but the meter (it had no battery). I did not remember a thing about Olympus rangefinders, save for the fact that many people here had said they were good cameras. This one had a lot of features.
Before going on, I asked the price. It turned out to be the equivalent to about 20 USD. As I had been looking for some time for a portable good quality rangefinder, in an impulse I bought it.
When I got home I started googling and found Andrew Yue's article
http://www.ph.utexas.edu/~yue/misc/35SP.html . It seems this camera is a really good one with some unusual features. I also looked at completed listings in ebay and at used prices in a few places - that really concentrated my attention since prices seemed way higher than 20 bucks.
Immediately I cleaned the camera and loaded a 15 frame roll of Tri-X for testing. It came out fine.
The camera needs a CLA, the speed ring is a bit stiff and sometimes the needle in the display gets stuck, but anyway the auto exposure and spot metering works. The rangefinder is quite bright and easy to snap in focus, it also seems quite accurate. Will have to remember to keep the camera in the case when not using, since the meter cell is not in the lens...a potential battery eater.
The camera:
One of the test images (as usual my flatbed is not very good at showing sharpness):
Offhand I would say that this lens is the equal of my Pentax SMC 50 f2 - it also uses the same size accessories which is very convenient.
I would welcome any comments about known issues with these Olys!
