Firstly Hanimex have never been known for their precision high quality photographic instruments, and churned out cheap plastic cameras through the 1970’s and 80’s from the factory in Hong Kong.

The RF35d is a 35mm SLR camera from 1979 - the RF not standing for rangefinder, but Reflex Flash. It has a fixed 45mm f2.8 Hanimar lens, a huge choice of ISO (100 or 400!), and fixed shutter speed of 1/125th. Correct exposure is obtained by adjusting the aperture until the red & green LED’s in the viewfinder are green.

Being made nearly entirely of cheap plastic, it is inevitably very light - and feels only slightly better than the Scam Cameras that fooled unexpecting buyers back in the day. Having said that I quite like it…

Loaded with fresh Kodak Gold 200, and ISO set to 100, the little Hanimex came with me for a few weeks to just take pictures - nothing serious, just pictures.

To my great surprise, the images are not bad - much better than I was expecting. Obviously you can tell they weren't taken with a proper camera and lens, but still, that is not what was intended. This was a fairly bright day and with the fixed 1/125th shutter speed, the aperture was around f11 to f16. The foreground has very little detail, but actually it looks ok overall.

To be fair, the whole roll was pretty good, with the exception of the few that I missed focus - the metering system was spot-on every time, and it is a very simple camera to use. The only real stumbling block is the lack of creative control - the only thing you can adjust is the aperture. You cannot decide to go for a shallow depth of field as the shutter speed is fixed, similarly you cannot opt for have motion blur - it is really just a point & shoot, but you have to match the exposure.

This plane wreck image sums up the limitations perfectly. The camera was mounted on a tripod, and I wanted to shoot with an aperture of f8 or f11 to make sure the whole plane was as sharp as the lens would allow, but had to open up to f5.6 due to the light. This has caused the front to be soft, and the back to be fine. The funny thing is I shot two cameras this day, and both failed to capture the scene properly! I will have to go back again.

The shot from the docks is probably the best technically - there are no soft areas, the exposure is perfect.

Hanimex would never have intended to compete with the proper SLR’s, but more the entry level consumer market, for families wanting something more than the average point & shoot. I am guessing it would have been very competitively priced too making it desirable to the right customer. On a magazine advert it would look just like any other SLR to the average Joe.

My final thoughts on the RF35d are mixed! For what it is, it does a pretty good job, but the exposure limitations make it something I doubt I will use again - but never say never!

How bad/good could a Hanimex SLR be?

Shooting a 1934 Noviflex…