Olympus 35 DC Review: The Trip 35's Bigger Brother with an F1.7 Lens
If you already know the Olympus Trip 35, the 35 DC is easy to explain. It works the same way — you point it, you press the button, and the camera decides the exposure for you. But it has a much brighter lens, and it lets you focus properly instead of guessing the distance.
It is the Olympus you reach for when the light starts to fade.
First, how it feels
Pick one up and the first thing you notice is the weight. It is solid. Not heavy in a tiring way, but there is real metal and glass in your hand, and you can feel it.
The shutter has a sound of its own — a soft, quick shhht. Olympus used the same kind of shutter in the PEN EED, and anyone who has held one will recognize it instantly. It is one of those sounds that makes you feel like you actually took a photograph, rather than just pressed a button.
The film advance is a lever, and it winds with a firm, deliberate stroke. If you have handled a Konica C35, the difference is easy to describe: the C35 feels light and quick, the 35 DC feels reassuringly solid.
The lens is the whole point
The 35 DC carries an F.Zuiko 40mm f/1.7 lens. That f/1.7 is the number that matters.
Most simple compacts of this era have lenses around f/2.8. That is fine outdoors, but indoors or in the evening they simply run out of light. On a Trip 35, this is exactly when the red flag appears in the viewfinder and the shutter refuses to fire.
The 35 DC keeps going. Indoors, on an evening street, in front of a lit shop window after sunset — these are the situations it was built for.
One honest limitation: you cannot choose the aperture yourself. The camera picks it, so you cannot deliberately set up a shallow depth of field the way you would with an SLR. But you can work with it. Get close to your subject, leave some distance behind them, and the background will fall away into soft blur on its own. Indoors and at dusk, when the lens is wide open anyway, this happens quite easily.
What the pictures actually look like
Here are some frames shot around Tokyo on the 35 DC.
You can see the character straight away. In bright, contrasty light the 35 DC protects the highlights and lets the shadows go deep and dark. Sunlit pavement keeps its texture, the clouds keep their shape, and the shaded areas become almost black.
If you like your photographs soft and even, this may not be the look you are after. But if you like strong light, hard shadows and a bit of drama in an ordinary street corner, the 35 DC gives you that without any effort on your part.
The lens itself is sharp, and it handles backlight well — even shooting almost into the sun, the images hold together.
Using it: focusing is your only job
Look through the viewfinder and you will see a small bright square in the middle. Inside it, a second, ghostly copy of the scene sits slightly offset.
Turn the focus ring, and that second image slides across until it lines up perfectly with the first. When the two become one, you are in focus. That is all there is to it. This is called a rangefinder, and it is the one thing the 35 DC asks you to do.
Everything else is automatic.
This is the big difference from the Trip 35. The Trip uses zone focusing — you estimate the distance and turn the ring to a little symbol of a person or a mountain. It is quick and it works, and many people love it for exactly that reason. The 35 DC is a little slower, but you see the focus confirmed before you press the button. For portraits, or for close subjects where a guess could be wrong, that confidence is worth the extra second.
How it compares to the cameras next to it
| Olympus Trip 35 | Konica C35 | Olympus 35 DC | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lens brightness | f/2.8 | f/2.8 | f/1.7 |
| Focusing | Zone (estimate) | Rangefinder | Rangefinder |
| Battery | Not needed | Needed | Needed |
| In low light | Red flag, won't fire | Struggles | Comfortable |
| Feel | Light, pocketable | Light and quick | Solid, substantial |
If you want the full story on any of these, we have written separate guides on the Trip 35 and the Konica C35.
The honest part: it needs its battery
There is no way around this one. If the battery is dead, the 35 DC does not take pictures. The shutter locks completely — there is no fixed-speed fallback, no manual mode, nothing.
This is worth knowing, because the other cameras we sell behave differently. A Konica C35 with a dead battery will still fire, and the Trip 35 does not use a battery at all. The 35 DC is the strict one.
The good news is that the battery itself is not a problem. The camera was designed for a 625 mercury cell, which no longer exists, but modern 1.5V equivalents are sold everywhere. Every 35 DC we ship has been adjusted so that a normal, easily available battery gives correct exposure. You just buy one and put it in.
We have written a full guide to film camera batteries and the mercury battery problem if you would like the longer explanation.
Buying a used 35 DC: four things to check
Most 35 DCs on the used market have been sitting in a drawer for decades. Here is what tends to be wrong with them.
1. Corrosion in the battery chamber. Many cameras were stored with the battery still inside. Over the years the cell leaks and eats away at the contacts. The chamber can look perfectly clean from the outside while the contact on the hidden side is already corroded through.
2. The light meter. The meter uses a CdS cell, and these age. The needle may still move, which looks reassuring, but moving is not the same as being accurate. Very few untouched cameras still measure correctly, and there is no way to judge this by eye — you need test equipment.
3. Rangefinder alignment. The double image is the camera's most important feature, and on a lot of surviving bodies it has drifted out of alignment. If the camera is in front of you, look through the finder and check it. If you are buying online, you are simply trusting the seller.
4. The self-timer. This is the 35 DC's weak spot, and the one most listings never mention. The self-timer lever very often jams partway through — and when it does, the shutter stops working too. A great many surviving cameras have this fault. There is no external fix and no trick to free it: the camera has to be opened up and serviced.
What we do to every 35 DC
Every camera is taken fully apart. That is not a selling point in itself — it is simply the only way to reach any of the problems above.
Once the top cover is off, seven wires run down into the body. We check every one of them, and replace any that have aged badly. Then we make sure the aperture blades open exactly as far as the meter is telling them to — on some cameras these have drifted apart, so the meter reads correctly while the exposure is still wrong. The shutter blades usually need cleaning too; decades of old oil and dust make them sluggish or stick them shut altogether.
The self-timer is the fiddly one. Deep inside, part of the timer mechanism works together with the shaft of the shutter button, and when that connection goes wrong the whole camera stops. It cannot be fixed from the outside — it has to be reached, cleaned and put right.
After that, the meter is recalibrated for a modern 1.5V battery, the rangefinder is aligned, and the camera is tested with film before it is listed.
So, is it the right camera for you?
The 35 DC suits you if: you like shooting indoors or in the evening; you want a camera that focuses accurately rather than by estimate; you enjoy strong light and deep shadows; and you do not mind carrying something with a bit of weight to it.
The Trip 35 suits you better if: you want the lightest, simplest thing possible; you shoot mostly outdoors in daylight; and you would rather never think about batteries at all.
They are not really rivals. Many people end up with both.
Questions we get asked
Does the Olympus 35 DC need a battery? Yes, and it will not work without one. Ours are adjusted for ordinary modern 1.5V cells.
Can I set the aperture or shutter speed myself? No. The 35 DC is fully automatic — you focus, and it does the rest.
Is it a good first film camera? It is a good second one, and a fine first one if you are happy to learn the double-image focusing. If you want the absolute simplest start, the Trip 35 is the easier door.
What film should I put in it? Color negative film such as Kodak Gold or UltraMax. It handles the camera's strong contrast well, and it is forgiving.
Ready to try one?
Every Olympus 35 DC we sell is fully restored by hand here in Tokyo, tested with film, and adjusted for modern batteries — self-timer included.
We only have two at the moment, each finished in our own hand-cut leather:
- Olympus 35 DC — Midnight Black Leather — $263.64
- Olympus 35 DC — Deep Navy Leather — $263.64
Because each camera takes several hours of work by hand, we rarely have more than a few in stock at once.