The Revue Solar 100 was sold several years ago in a set with the Revuenon lens by the German mail discount shop Quelle for 200 DEM, today around 100 Euro. The camera is fully manual, that means you have to set the aperture/exposure time compination on your own. But you have the help of a TTL lightmeter and three LEDs inside the viewfinder which makes the work with this camera quite fast, after you got a little training.

The technical data of the camera is not very remarkable, more standard. The exposure times are ranging from 1/2000 s till 1 s and B, the camera has a hot shoe and a self timer. A special thing about the Solar 100 is the photo voltaic array on top of the view finder: during your photographic outdoor activities, the sunlight will power the lightmeter and the lightmeter's battery of the camera. First of all, it helps reducing your battery waste, and secondly it's just convenient as you'll never have a camera without juice!

Those of you who are using one of the cheaper Voigtländer Bessa camera bodies will probably notice that the whole top array (except the viewfinder area, of course...) of their Bessa is the same as that of the Solar 100.

This was the first SLR camera I used, thanks to my dad who gave it to me. Unfortunately it sucked over a year ago and I changed to my current Ricoh SLR. Until then, the camera produced good pictures and was quite reliable, except for the winding mechanism which was a little 'fragile'. The final reason of death was also a complete stuck of the winding mechanism... But, still this camera set, especially with the outstanding Revuenon 1:1.2 55mm lens was a great (and cheap) opportunity for people interested in 'serious' photography to get started.


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