Minox 35 PL

[JoeFriday]

last night I was rummaging through my Big Box of Cameras, and realized I had a Minox in there that I had never checked out.. it's really a nifty little camera, apparently similar to a Contax T (but zone-focusing only, not RF)

so I loaded it up with some Kodak 400UC film I had sitting around, and I've been carrying it around today.. for those who aren't familiar, it's about the size of a pack of cigarettes, made out of plastic so it's really light, and it's REALLY quiet

our company's receptionist was just in my office using my worktable to collate some papers, and was making a rather goofy face as she did so.. I reached for the Minox, set the focus and took a photo.. she never even knew I had a camera in my hand

 

[phototone]

The Minox is a great camera. I have one of the original 35 EL, which is basically identical to yours. I hope you put new batteries in it, as the shutter won't work without good batteries.
when you fire the shutter, you cannot tell if it is working or not, as it is silent.

It would be more accurate to say that the Contax T is similar to the Minox, as the Minox 35 design predates the Contax by a decade or more.

 

[JoeFriday]

I just took a 'selfy' with the timer to see that it's working.. yep.. seems fine

I need to use up the roll today and get it developed to find out if the camera is reliable for a day at Octoberfest on Saturday.. should be lots of street action to capture, and I don't want to carry around a bulky camera all day

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

I like the Minox 35 (I have the GL) because of all the things you pointed out; my two gripes with it are that the winding mechanism is anything but quiet (which balances the ultra-quiet shutter), which is not loud, but it does grab people's attention in a quiet room; the other is that the light meter is not quite reliable, imo. I've had a few rolls developed, and the frames are all over the place, from over-, properly-, to underexposed, but mostly underexposed. I guess you need a bit of practice with it (and I am aware of the "backlight" switch for the meter).

It's a fun camera; much much less complicated than the Rollei 35. Surprisingly good lens.

 

[DougK]

I like my GL for outdoor stuff when I don't feel like carrying a big haevy camera. Nice lens, crappy film advance.

 

[Tim]

I've had a couple of old GL's, but they all had some little problems, so a few years ago I splashed out and bought a new 35-GTX. All the little foibles (questionable metering, noisy advance, hazy finder) all of a sudden dissapeared with a new camera. I think they are subject to deterioration from either abuse or non use, on the various minox forums they seem to have a reputation for a bit of frailty. That said, the GT's been great, it's gone a lot of places with me, and taken some great shots.
Just a shame that they don't make them anymore, and if the shutter ever breaks you're pretty well screwed.......

Oh, btw, on the shutter - there IS a different sound when the batteries are too flat to fire your shutter, after a while you get to recognise it........ It still clicks, but it's a shorter duller click. But usually you only realise that after a while - "hmmm, that didn't sound quite right....." - usually too late!

 

[pvdhaar]

One of the most peculiar features of the Minox 35 is that there's a microswitch in the flash hot shoe. When a flash is mounted, it gets pushed, and the Minox switches to 1/125 (or if you've got an older one 1/60). Now it's up to the user to set the aperture to match the setting of the flash. This takes away a lot of freedom to balance flash versus ambient.

It is however possible to use an X-acto knife, and make a small cutout on the shoe of the flash itself so that the microswitch doesn't get pushed (you'd preferably use a cheapy flash). When this is done, the Minox doesn't go into 1/125 mode, but remains in aperture priority, giving a proper ambient exposure. I did this with a left over (read: 20yrs old) Toshiba flash and found that the Minox (in this case GT-E model) synced at all speeds, all the way up to the maximum shutter speed. It was very easy to get a small dab of fill with this set up.

The only down side is that if you want the flash to be the main light (i.e. shutter 1/125), you need an additional flash without the cutout.

 

[Sean Chan]

Nice mentioning of this microswitch in the flash hot shoe from Peter.

Another old Minox trick is to put the camera into manual exposure mode by fixing the shutter speed at 1/60 or 1/125 by inserting a switched off flash light. Then the you have control over the apenture size and hence the exposure manually. Useful under difficult lighting situration or when the camera's meter is not working correctly during you holiday trips aboard.

 

[Michael W]

I have 2 Minox's- a 35 GT-X and a 35 ML. They are great little pocket cameras and the lens on both camera is very sharp. The lens on the 35 GT-X has a built on skylight filter, and the best overall build quality and reliability. What it lacks is the ability to set the ASA manually, which is a problem if you want to set a different ASA than the DX coding on the film cartridge (unless you use stick on DX Code lablels). It also does not have a shutter exposure lock.

The 35 ML is particularly nice beacuse it is the only Minox on which you can lock the exposure by depressing the shutter release half-way (no one knows why they dropped that feature on later models). The ML also is the only Minox model to offer a fully Auto mode. It is considered one of the best shooters by Minox enthusiasts.

All the best,

Michael