Camera Talk

Yashica Electro 35 MC Twins by P F McFarland, on Flickr

Got really lucky on an auction one night, and won a two-for-one deal on these cameras. Turns out one was made in Hong Kong, and the other in Japan. You can only tell the difference between the two by the manufacture stamping on the base plate, the serial numbers (the Hong Kong model starts with an H), and the name ring on the lens (the Hong Kong model says “Lens Made In Japan”, while the other one says “Yashica Japan”).

40mm f2.8 lens, step less shutter speeds electronically controlled from 4 seconds to 1/500. X-Sync automatically set when a PC flash cord is plugged into the socket, with GN setting scale on the lens barrel. Viewfinder with Focus Zone indicator (scale focusing on lens), and bright line frame with parallax marks. Battery Indicator lamp on top stays on during exposure or self timer actuation.

Just a nice, compact camera that would be great for street photography.

It didn’t burn out the highlights

High Contrast Check by P F McFarland, on Flickr


I should have chosen something with a darker background

Close-up by P F McFarland, on Flickr


A touch of flare

Backlighting by P F McFarland, on Flickr


F2.8 on the left, and f16 on the right

Depth-Of-Field by P F McFarland, on Flickr


Between 2-3 seconds at f2.8

Night Tower by P F McFarland, on Flickr


The second roll, Kodak Ektra 100 in the “Made In Japan” model, was all over the place as far as exposures were concerned. It did seem to settle down after a while, so it could just be the shutter working out some stiffness after who knows how long it’s been sitting around.


Needed a little exposure adjustment (slightly dark)

Water Veil by P F McFarland, on Flickr


Exposure and focus good on this one

Dancing Tree by P F McFarland, on Flickr


Strong backlighting

Autumn Holdouts by P F McFarland, on Flickr


And bring up the rear of this camera test

Rounding The Point by P F McFarland, on Flickr


To see all the examples, follow this link to Flickr https://flic.kr/s/aHskx55FvJ

PF

The B&W series looks pretty good and the lenses are sharp. A capable pair of little compacts.

So, they have no manual control for exposure? you just set the aperture and go?

Julio1fer wrote:The B&W series looks pretty good and the lenses are sharp. A capable pair of little compacts.

So, they have no manual control for exposure? you just set the aperture and go?

That's pretty much the jist of it, Julio, Aperture Priority only. You can do daylight fill flash, though the sync speed is 1/30.

PF

That is good enough for a lot of work, PF. You got a lucky pair of twins.

These are nice little cameras indeed and there's not much on them that can break. I really like the style of this model : it looks less dated than the GSN, perhaps because of the more square angles. The aperture priority seems to work great, and you got some very good results there from them.