Rollei 35 SE Sonnar v Olympus XA.

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Anyone compared the quality of these two with Black and White film, if so what did you think ???
 
The Rollei has a great lens.

The XA has a good lens and is much easier and faster to use.

Stephen
 
Agree with Stephen, though the shutter release on the XA I've always found a little vague, including trying to get your finger in the right place to trip it while the camera is held up at your eye. GREAT camera otherwise. Both are brilliant designs.
 
I have the Rollei 35SE the slower speeds are a bit off even with regular exercising. Looked on YouTube and there are a couple of videos showing how easy it is to get inside and clean it up.
One problem I have is that the lens will not collapse into the body for some reason now. Maybe I will find out the problem once I get inside her.
 
I think it depends on what specific use case you want the camera for. I wanted a small carry-anywhere point and shoot (with some control) type camera and borrowed a Rollei 35 Sonnar, Olympus XA and XA2 from a friend.

The Sonnar was the hardest to use, followed by the XA (simple enough), and the XA2 was the most straightforward. The XA series' flash is also a nice thing to have.

The Rollei 35 is easily the better made camera—it's like a swiss watch.

Ultimately I decided to get an XA2. All three are great cameras, but the Rollei is a beast to focus and will likely involve a lot of hard work and time before you will get every shot correctly focused. That isn't a bad thing, but it was simply not suited for my needs.

Looking back, I think that the two cameras are so dissimilar that it's not really possible to compare them except for their size (Rollei is smaller but the XA is also very very small). You should decide based on your use case and needs.
 
I have both. No argument the XA faster to use and also a nice picture taker (good lens). The Rollei is a more serious camera (funny to say considering it is scale-focus) and becomes easy enough to use when you actually use it regularly. It is such a well built and beautifully designed camera, I'd recommend trying it out.
 
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