Minox 35 ML

First Impressions

The Minox 35 ML does not look like anything special. And it was not untill I had developed the first role of black and white film that I realized that I finaly found what I had been looking for during the past two years.

What I had been looking for was a small pocket camera, easy to handle which fits into the pockets of my trousers and takes good photos. A back up for my rangefinder camera in situation where I needed an innocent looking or even better invisible camera.

The Minox 35 ML is almost invisible and quick to use because nobody takes it serious. I worked myself through almost every serious point and shoot camera untill I found this baby and now this is the camera I take most of my street and family photos with.

Photos of my Minox 35 ML

Handling

The Minox 35 ML is the smallest and lightest serious camera I ever used. There are many Minox 35 siblings but most of them only work with quicksilver batteries and you need an adapter. The ML takes ordinary 6V LR44 batteries.

She works in aperture priority or program mode. You can only select the aperture but you see in the view finder the equivalent exposure time. And the light meter works absolutely great.

You have to estimate the distance. Something I always hated but to my surprise it works realy well and it makes it realy fast to shoot. Much faster then with my rangefinder cameras. To my surprise I very rarely misgudge the distance and hardly get out of focus shots.

You have to chose aperture and distance at the lense which can be a bit fiddly but I got used to it pretty quickly too.

Film loading is easy: you take the bottom of and lode the cartridge. Easy and fast. With Minox MT 35 you get a flash for this camera which can be tilted. I usualy head the flash against the ceiling to avoid the typical flash look and even this works here.

As good as the rest is the price. I love this camera so much that I bought five by now on ebay. And I payed between 15 and 33 EUR for them - sometimes even with (a more simple) flash, box and manual. They were pretty expensive in the 80ies (almost 500 DM) but they still seem to sleep like cinderellas.

Is there any downside at this camera? Simple answer: no. At least not for me. People are willing to pay crazy prices for a Yashica T5 which I used too for a while untill I found the ML. I sold mine recently for a crazy price too. This camera takes way better photos for a fraction of the price.Even the Leica Minilux or Nikon 35 Ti can´t compete with it.

My advise: get one or two as long as they are still so cheap.