When visiting my family this summer, we took a quick tour of the attic. As my father once was a film shooter, we went over his old collection of cameras. Mostly 35mm SLR: a Canon AE-1, a Mamiya/Sekor 1000 and some other not so useful oddities.
But then I stumbled upon an old dusty Yashica box. Interesting ... It was indeed. I discovered a mint Yashica Mat 124G that my father bought in France in 1978. I was so excited as I was only shooting 35mm. Using my father own camera would be awesome to get into medium format.
After removing the dust, I discovered that the main lens was completely hazy. Which seems to be a common issue with these TLRs. A few Amazon orders later ... the vacuum pads allowed me to safely remove the lenses and clean them. Note that you need to mark the exact position of the lens so you can screw it back at the exact same distance of the film plate. You would end up with focusing issues if not.
The Yashica seemed ready even without a battery for the light meter but who cares? Two days after this we were leaving to the Dominican Republic for our mandatory quarantine before getting back into the us. Long story short I bought some film last minute in France and decided to wait a bit before testing this.
And here we go. Between the jet-lag and the excitement to test this camera, I woke up an hour before sunrise and began walking on the amazing beach. (Hint: the Suntracker AR iOS app is amazing to actually see where and when the sun is going to come up).
Who doesn't love challenges? Why not testing this old just repaired camera with some hard to nail/shoot film? I went for Velvia 100 that is obviously a slide film. And knowing that the exposure latitude was definitely smaller than what I'm used to shoot, I already sensed a huge fail.
I set the Yashica on the tripod. Check focus 10+ times. Screw in the flexible shutter release, use Viewfinder on the iPhone to meter and boom. The first shot. Unfortunately I just remember it was f/8. So mostly around 1/2 or 1s exposure.
And damn I'm in love. I was sure it would be crappy. Velvia added this magenta tint on top of the orange/pink sunrise. The lens is plenty sharp for my needs. To my surprise the exposure was spot on with just the silhouette of the island and a good latitude in the sky. I'm not sure what created this "vignette" effect in the bottom left corner but I'm happy with it.
After that sunrise I walked back to the room and took these two frames on the beach:
The first one was more to test the depth of field of medium format as I'm new to it. I'm quite pleased with the result. We definitely see that magenta tint in the shadows due to Velvia.
This one is definitely not as good. I still struggle a lot when in a backlit situation.
After a few hours, I decided to pick up the Yashica again and go for a late afternoon walk. Here are the results.
Walking back to the hotel I stumbled upon a white heron walking around. I'm definitely not into bird photography but it was interesting to see him wandering around the hotel and the rooms.
But wait. What are these light leaks? Did I mess up with the roll. No Guillaume. These are just your fat fingers in front of the lens ...
Talking about finders, let's move to the last picture. A nice double exposure with fingers. Yeah. I have no idea how this double exposure happened. The Yashica does not allow you to take another frame if you haven't advanced the film. This will stay a mystery for now.
I'm still surprised that Velvia actually handled the highlights pretty well in that situation.
The Yashica is starting to grow on me. I'm still not as fast as I am with my rangefinder but looking through the ground glass definitely give you another perspective even if I still struggle with the left/right inversion ...
Let me know if you have any question about this camera!
Cheers.