Halina 35x - Test Shots

[Mos6502]

I persevered and finished another roll in this camera. Almost made the same mistake I did with the first roll, but using a key for extra leverage was able to force in the rewind button despite tension on the film from reaching the end of the roll.

The results are kind of better than I had expected...



It's acceptably sharp in the center (acceptable for 5x7 prints anyway - probably not for anything larger) - but the focus falls off noticeably in the edges, even at f11. There is some slight vignetting too. The overall effect is reminiscent of the Lomo LC-A in my opinion - but no noticeable pincushion distortion.


Crop. Shot at f5.6 noticeably soft.



Kind of odd flare in a strip along the side.



Hey! I'm actually pretty good at guessing distances without a rangefinder it turns out! One thing I do not like about the lens is the way it renders OOF areas. But I can't put my finger on what it is that I don't like about it. It's smooth, but in a strangely blurred way - there's something rather unnatural looking about it.





I wasn't expecting much, so it did exceed my expectations. However it's a pretty mediocre lens even for a low price triplet. I guess considering these things cost half of what an Argus C3 cost that is acceptable though. Kind of.

[Attila]

These are not bad at all from a toy camera! Many thanks to sharing them!

[martinsmith99]

It looks fine to me. Not a great deal of saturation though, but acceptably sharp from what I can see and the bokeh is ok to my eyes.

[Mos6502]

I think it may do better with B/W than color. The lens has a tendency to flare and wash out color from what I've seen in other people's pics on tumblr.

Someday I'll run a roll of b/w through it and see how it goes. I bet if I cross processed slide film from it, I could get people to believe I used a Lomo LCA.

[scsambrook]

We still have the Halina 35X I got for our first son when he was four or five . . . I wouldn't call it a "toy camera" but it does have some characteristics that get in the way of good results. The lens isn't coated (not a disaster in itself) AND there's no matte-blacking worth mentioning on ither the edges of the lenses or the inside of the lens assembly. And the black inside the camera body is usually shiny - ! Hence all the flare and washed-out results. See if you can find a push-on lens hood, it's not a cure but it will help a bit.

I think if you've had the negs scanned that playing with the contrast and saturation will utterly transform the results

[Mos6502]

Mine has coating on the front element

The inside of mine is actually well painted. Maybe too well, the film rails weren't compeltely cleaned of paint!

The biggest problem for me was the super stiff focussing. I cleaned the old grease out (I don't think it is grease at all actually, and I don't mean that sarcastically, but I think they intentionally used something tacky to hold the focus in place -it has unfortunately become too tacky over time) - and used a dab of white grease.

I agree it is not a toy. It was sold as a cheap snap shot camera, and I suppose that is probably what it is best for.

I did have a toy camera, an Anny 35 that produced just as good results (with a single element lens even), but lacked the adjustments - only the aperture could be set. The Halina offers a photographer real controls. To a point. I'm not sure how accurate the shutter is (apparently accurate enough for negative film though) - and I'm not sure how accurate the apertures are since they're rather oddly dependent on the lens focus during assembly.

Oh and one other thing, the viewfinder is terrible.. It's a little bit bigger than the one on an Argus C3 - but you can't even see the corners with eyepiece pressed into your eyeball. It is what it is I guess.

All that being said, I can still see myself using it again in the future.

[scsambrook]

Back in the 1960s it had something of a following in the UK, believe it or not. Not sure when it originated, maybe around 1963, but it was "endorsed" by one of the popular photo magazines as being ideal for a beginner to learn all about photography. No, I can't think why either . . . unless it was the very low price which was around half the cheapest German-made alternatives. The focusing was always impossibly stiff, you had to cock the shutter manually, and take care not to rip the film sprockets when you loaded it. But it DID hammer home the essentials of camera handling

I think the earlier ones were maybe better than the later ones. The negs or slides were actually tolerably sharp (apart from the lack of contrast) and the shutter speeds (all 4 of them) seemed accurate enough. It was superseded by the Halina Paulette and Paulette Electric (built in selenium meter) which bore a resemblence to the later Regula plastic-framed cameras, and were actually fairly pleasant to use. Until they broke. The old 35x just kept grinding and clunking along . . . .

[Mos6502]

I don't doubt it. There are a few people on tumblr who've posted tons of photos they took as kids during the 1960s. It looks like a real camera, it's durable (if not precise), and it was cheap. Ideal camera for a youngster who wanted a "real camera" to get into photography.

I don't think they were sold in the U.S., but I know they were sold in Canada, though in apparently much smaller numbers than in the U.K. The Japanese already had a big presence in North America by the start of the 60s, and there was a good selection of high quality, but very rudimentary cameras available in the $20-$30 price bracket.

[Farside]

I had one of those as my first proper 35mm camera, way back then. It produced (to my eyes, at the time) tolerably good results (but I was used to an Instamatic, so what did I know). Actually, several of the shots I took weren't too bad and it did serve to instill a useful base for later camera handling.
It was a solid little lump and just kept going with a feel of indestructability that belied its low price.