Rollei QZ35W/35T -vs- Leica Minilux

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Leica Photography : One Thread

I'm trying to decide which of these systems to buy. From this site and others, I've read many good things about the Leica Minilux Zoom. But recently, the price for the Rollei QZ has fallen to the point that's it's in the same price range of the Minilux Zoom w/Flash.

From reading rather limited reviews I've found on the Rollei, specs are better than the Minilux Zoom. Shutter speed range from 16 to 1/8000th. Faster lens of 2.8/5.6 Auto everything and manual-override almost everything. These specs are usually reserved for SLRs, which makes the Rollei quite a deal.

However, I'm looking for opinions, especially from those who have used the Rollei QZ. Lens performance, auto-focus, motor, flash, etc. So help me out if you can. :-)

TIA Niki

-- Niki Nguyen (Cadenza_7o@yahoo.com), August 16, 2001

Answers

I have used a Rollei QZ35W briefly. It's a much larger camera then the Leica Minilux Zoom, not really in the same class ... about the same size as a Leica M, really.

That said, it's brilliant. The zoom range is great, the lens is superb, the automatic operation to total manual control is excellent. My biggest reservation is the large and heavy flash unit ... not because it doesn't work well, but simply because it's large, heavy and does not have a standard hot shoe mount to allow for other options. The short end of the zoom range is reasonably quick at f/2.8, f/5.6 at 60mm becomes a little marginal for a lot of the photography I like to do. The shutter speed flexibility alone is far and away more than the Minilux Zoom allows.

It's an altogether different kind of camera than the Minilux Zoom. You have to decide whether you're in the market for a compact or a full size camera, whether the additional features are valuable to you. Either can return very very high quality photographs.

-- Godfrey DiGiorgi (ramarren@bayarea.net), August 16, 2001.


I was exited about the Rollei until I saw one in person. It is large and heavy-more in the same size and feel of a Contax G2 than the Minilux. At the time, I was looking for a fairly compact camera to take with me when I didn't want to lug around an SLR or my M3. If you don't mind the size, the camera seems to be a good performer and the current price (which is about half of the original) is more appealing. By the way, the flash is not TTL-something that was confusing in some of the literature. I also thing the flash is a hokey design, like some kind of miniture Metz handle mount. For the size of that thing, they should have had room for a decent built in flash or a hot shoe.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), August 17, 2001.

Why not consider the non-zoom Minilux? Faster lens, faster shutter, better performance. Here's Erwin Put's evaluation of the lens.

http://www.imx.nl/photosite/leica/magazine/minilux.html

-- Bud (budcook@attglobal.net), August 17, 2001.


The Rollei is great, takes picture much better than the Minilux, but the flash sucks!

-- Mitchell Li (mitchli@pacbell.net), August 18, 2001.

The Rollei QZ35W/T are very capable cameras with excellent Rollei zoom lenses (I have the QZ35T model). But it is large and heavy - not your 'normal' P&S. For causal travel use, it is hard to beat if you don't mind the size and weight. The following is what I posted on Contax G list for QZ two years ago:

"...I have been using a QZ35T for a while. Overall, I think the camera is very well designed and built. The zoom lens, 38-90/2.8-5.6 Rollei Apogon, is truly outstanding. The lens performs very well at open f-stops throughout the zoom range. It has an internal focus mechanism, ...Focusing and film winding on the Rollei are about as noisy as the G2. The motorized zoom is very noisy, and it is not a true zoom in a sense that it zooms out in steps at 45, 60, 75, 80, and 90 focal lengths. The viewfinder on the Rollei is just like the one on G2 but there is no parallax correction for close up.

The flash of the Rollei unit is an odd unit and it is not TTL (incorrectly stated in the Rollei advertisement) but distance-based. But the prints and slides I got using the flash were all right on the mark,... The only thing that I don't like of the camera is that it's too bulky, … If one should consider the QZ35 as such camera, the QZ35W with the 28-60/2.8-5.6 Rollei Apogon will be a better choice."

Hope this helps.

-- Cing-Dao Kan (cdkan@yahoo.com), August 20, 2001.



Moderation questions? read the FAQ