camera with interchangeable lenses. It was widely regarded as the best camera that used 126 film cartridges, even though this film format was only ever intended for beginners. Although Kodak, too, made an Instamatic SLR camera, their primary objective was to draw attention to their brand of film rather than make money from the camera. Despite the high cost of tooling up to manufacture the SL26, only around 28,000 were ever made. The SL26 cost 628.23 DM, and two accessory lenses were available for it: the wide-angle Pro-Tessar (f/3.2, 28 mm) costing 232.43 DM, and the Pro-Tessar (f/3.2, 28 mm) costing 282.88 DM. Rolleiflex SL35 After 35 mm SLR cameras became popular, Rollei began to develop its own 35 mm product line in 1966; but it was already too late – just as the SL66 project had been. Rollei now faced competition – not from a small company like Hasselblad, but from large, well-financed Japanese companies who could afford to advertise heavily in glossy magazines and trade journals. What is more, they invited photographic dealers to Japan to view their factories. The Rolleiflex SL35 was introduced in 1970; it was quite compact and comparable in price (675 DM) and quality with Japanese cameras. Rollei had modelled its design on the top-selling 35 mm SLR camera of the time, the Pentax Spotmatic, although it did not surpass it in quality. Rollei introduced a new bayonet lens mount for the SL35, the QBM (Quick Bayonet Mount). Besides a choice of two standard f/1.8, 50 mm lenses (either a Zeiss Planar or a Schneider SL-Xenon), the initial lens range included: Distagon f/2.8, 25 mm Distagon f/2.8, 35 mm Sonnar f/2.8, 85 mm Tele Tessar f/4, 135 mm Tele Tessar f/4, 200 mm At this point Rollei still lagged behind the large Japanese companies who already offered fish-eye lenses, super-telephoto lenses and zoom lenses. Although few amateur photographers purchased lenses such as these in the early 1970s, from a marketing perspective, statements published in camera reviews like "lenses available with focal lengths from 7.5 mm to 800 mm" sounded more impressive than "... from 25 to 200 mm". Consequently, Rollei soon expanded their range; by 1973 a total of 16 lenses (all with fixed focal-lengths) were available for the Rolleiflex SL35: 13 from Carl Zeiss (Oberkochen), and 3 from Schneider-Kreuznach. In 1974 Rollei introduced the SL350, the successor to the SL35. Despite state-of-the-art open-aperture