Pre-Orders for Mint’s $799 Rollei 35AF Film Camera Start September 10
Mint will open pre-orders for its upcoming Rollei 35AF film camera, which has been in development for five years, on September 10.
In January, Mint announced that the film camera it had been working on would be a modern re-imagining of the Rollei 35 S and Mint’s founder Gary Ho came to an official agreement with Rollei to not only use the classic logo but also the name. The new camera is meant to evoke the same joy as the original but addresses three main issues Ho says he had with it: lack of autofocus, no built-in flash, and poor ergonomics. Remaking the camera would allow him to not only address these issues but also allow fans of Rollei’s original camera to avoid the increasing difficulty of finding parts to repair it (not to mention the technical expertise to do so).
Mint’s Rollei 35AF was originally slated for release in the summer of 2024 but slipped slightly into the fall. Additionally, the company originally aimed to price the camera between $650 and $800 but clearly ended up at the high end of that estimation as the camera will be priced at $799. All that said, earlier this summer, Mint showed that it had a working prototype when it published images captured with the new film camera.
“Five years ago we embarked upon a journey to revive a dream, a dream we believe is held by many film photography enthusiasts. This dream has led us down many long and winding roads, but with the help of a very dedicated and talented team, step by step we have finally reached this point,” Mint writes on its Rollei 35AF Instagram page. “We’re pleased to share with you the Rollei 35AF, a brand new 35mm film camera, paying homage to the great lineage of Rollei 35 cameras in the past, whilst forging ahead a new path for the future of film photography.”
Mint has not stated a planned date of availability and even now has not committed to a firm date. While pre-orders will open on September 15, Mint only says that it has the “expectation of shipping out first units starting from the mid-October.”
“With the amount of sign ups received so far, we have turned our focus fully on expanding production capacity, aiming to fulfill as much demand as possible in the first several months of the launch. We are thrilled at the enthusiasm shown from the community and cannot wait to get the camera into your hands. More communication will follow as we approach pre-order, but for now we will keep our heads down and get back to work,” Mint says.
Mint previously revealed that the time and effort that went into developing this camera resulted in development costs that were “sky high” and that it was “risking the whole company to get this project off the ground.” It’s a huge gamble, but if Mint can fulfill demand and maintain high quality, photographers will surely reward it. Just based on how popular Pentax’s film project was when it launched the Pentax 17, there is no shortage of demand for new film cameras.
Image credits: Mint
