Went for way too much money in the end. The 35SP I bought was advertised as "working". Needle moving and needle giving correct result are two different things.

Unfair to pick out the Oly 35 SP, the dual metering modes (great if they worked) were some of the least reliable among old cameras.

A camera is degigned to take picture no matter who made it each manufacturer makes a turky once in a while. Contax made one with there autofocus system that only lasted a very short while i understood their reasoning, but the end product was bad.

Rolei made slr's their battery was unreliable and when it went down you were stuffed, far better to use AA's.

just accept the 35s has had its day.

John

Don't judge a camera on the grounds of one, faulty example that you can't use correctly. ;-) The 35S has a cult following for a reason, at the time it was the smallest 35mm camera, and the Zeiss Sonnar 40mm f2.8 lens is really stunning once you use it properly. Thus it combined excellent construction quality (most reports claim them to be very reliable), great optical quality and a tiny package. What's not to like? It could very easily compete today!

I'm wondering if opinion here is based on the one once owned, or still owned. Realistically it is more accurate to take particular cameras in numbers. Beleive is or not, even some Leica Rangefinders you might come across would appear to be the most unreliable bags of c*ap.....and dare I say, even some lenses are incredibly soft....if you take one example of a particular model to exclusively base an opinion on.