Overall, it’s a solid camera in a tiny package.Īll that said, I have a problem with the Petri Color 35. There’s nothing particularly special about the basic design, but the little touches show close attention to detail. The back is removed for loading, with a fold-down pressure plate to locate the film in the gate. The advance is by a typical single-stroke lever, recessed and with a nicely-engineered dust shield. The meter cell is inside the filter ring, meaning that the meter is automatically compensated for any filter mounted. The coated lens is a four element/three group 40mm f/2.8, mounted in a simple shutter with a four bladed aperture that takes common 40.5mm filters. While neither of these has a display in the viewfinder, the meter does, and it seems like it was intended that the user shoot in a sort of manual shutter priority mode, selecting the shutter speed, and then adjusting the (clickless) aperture until the meter needle comes into the center.īeyond the controls, the Color 35 is fairly conventional for a small Japanese consumer camera. Shutter speed and aperture are selected by knobs on the right side of the top plate. The lens retraction and focusing mechanism is actuated by turning a wheel on the back of the top plate, with the focus distance displayed on a scale across the bottom of the viewfinder.
The Petri is designed around the idea that the photographer should be able to operate all the controls while looking through the viewfinder, something that apparently never entered the minds of the Rollei engineers. The Petri Color 35 is about the same size as the Rollei 35, and like the Rollei it’s an unusual design, though very much in its own way. Not feeling it worthwhile or necessary, I left it alone).
Fortunately, my guess that it would be a relatively easy camera to take apart and revive proved correct, and I was left with a nice, clean, and functional example (well, except for the meter – I discovered corrosion in the wire from the battery compartment, and repairing it would require major disassembly. Like so many other cameras I’ve had here at Filmosaur HQ, this little Petri came to me with a problem: the shutter was stuck.
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