Tripping with the Trip 35

I just noticed that since I wrote this post about my ‘new’ Olympus Trip 35 in mid-march I have hardly published anything about it. Just the Castle pics from some days back.

Well, this can be mended! I did indeed use it those last days and the results are quite pleasing… to my humble taste at least. Of course the lens is tack-sharp and can’t be faulted, when my focusing is spot on at least. But zone focusing with this camera is much easier than with the Olympus XA2.

Two reasons for that:

1. The Trip 35 has 4 clicking focus settings for 1m, 1,5m, 3m and infinity whereas the XA2 has only three at 1,2m, 3m and infinity.
2. The focusing happens at the right place, on the lens ring and not on a stubby small knob on the front of the camera.

Of course it’s bigger than the XA2 so it won’t be with me quite as often, but it’s still very much coat-pocketable.

As I don’t have a fitting original lens cap I ordered a clipping cap on eBay, that fits the bizarre filter thread of 43,5mm. What’s more, the cap has no logo on it and the plastic front has a ‘leatherette-like’ texture. Looks quite nice. Problem is, the cap does not fit the lens directly as it’s gripping mechanism is too deep and gets in the way of the lens elements. I solved this by adding a 43,5mm UV filter that came with the camera, or rather just the filter ring as I took out the glass – we don’t want to put some cheap glass in front of a great lens, do we?

Added advantage is that the filter ring that’s quite deep acts as a small lens shade. Perfect!

Not quite, as this shade does obstruct the selenium meter cells surrounding the lens a bit, but just a bit. And that’s GOOD! Yes, it makes the meter believe there’s just a tad less light than there is and the camera is over-exposing the film by a small amount. And this is just great as I normally try to over-expose my films to get all those details from the shadows.

All in all the results from this jewel are looking great. Here are some more for you.

Thanks for stopping by!