Photos, Yashica 35-ME review

I got some film developed the other day and posted the better shots on

Mastodon. They seemed to be well received, so for the sake of people

who aren't in the Fediverse, and just to incresae the amount of

interesting stuff on Gopher, I've added a Photography page to my

gopherhole[1]. I will (hopefully!) continue to put some of my photos

up here in future. Circumlunar space offers it's denizens 200MB of

gopherspace, and I don't want to treat myself any differently, so if

the photos end up pushing me close to the limit, I'll either delete

the old ones or raise the quota accros the board.

Before heading on holiday through the Baltic states, I decide to buy

a smaller camera to take with me. Since not long after I got into

analog photography, I have used a Canon AE-1 SLR (I know, it's such a

cliche hipster camera, but I saw it for sale online at a stupidly

cheap price one Saturday morning bought it almost out of reflex). I

have three prime lenses, in 28mm, 50mm and 130mm focal lengths, which

is a nice versatile little kit. It's not super heavy, and I can

easily carry it all around in a single shoulder bag, which is no

problem when I'm just wandering around my home city. But when I'm on

longish holidays, having a whole bag just for my camera stuff can be

a pain. So I thought I'd get something small enough to be able to

just put in the same bag I use to carry everything else. Smaller and

ligher than the AE-1 with just it's 50mm lens was my goal.

Normally this is the kind of thing I would spend weeks obsessively

researching and monitoring eBay to achieve, but because I decided on

this plan not long before I left, I actually went into a physical

brick and mortar store near me with a decent range of vintage cameras

(well, I'm not a total caveman, I perused their offerings online

first). They had two nice Yashica cameras for basically the same

price (around 40 Euro, not dirt cheap but cheap enough for a "real"

store) - a Yashica MG-1 and a Yashica ME-35.

The Yashica MG-1 was clearly the "better" camera of the two. It is

the last (and least impressively specced) camera in the very

well-known and highly regarded Electro 35 series (as famously used

by Peter Parker in his capacity as a photojournalist for the Daily

Bugle!). However, I bought the ME-35 instead, even though I felt

like a bit of a sucker as I was getting less capability and street

cred for my money. The reason is that it's much smaller and

lighter than the MG-1 (which only just barely beat out the AE-1 50mm

setup), and it also takes bog standard LR44 button cell batteries,

which you can buy cheaply from non-specialist stores in any country

you are likely to go on holiday. The MG-1, like a lot of nice old

cameras, was desiged for old mercury batteries which are now illegal

in any country that is even remotely concerned about environmental

protection. Yeah, you can buy adapters to use modern bateries, and

sometimes even modern batteries of the right size, but they're a

specialist item you have to buy online or at a camera store and I

couldn't quite be bothered. So, the ME-35 won.

It's not a bad little camera at all, and I don't want to give it a

bad review, especially after only running two rolls through it.

That said, I struggled with it a bit on this trip. It was

exceptionally sunny almost every day of the journey, and this made

it quite difficult to avoid overexposure. The maximum shutter speed

is 1/650 (compared to 1/1000 on the AE-1), and the minimum aperture

is f14 (compared to f32 on my 50mm FD lense), so the brightest

lighting I could handle was about two stops lower than I am used to.

Even with ISO 200 film, a lot of shots just weren't possible. An

ND filter would have solved all this, of course, but the required

size is a rare one these days, pushing the price and effort beyond

what this little camera is probably worth. I guess I could have

experimented with pushing the film (would have been my first time),

but in the end I just kind of relaxed and took less photos than I

otherwise would have.

The only other thing to complain about, and it's minor, is that

there is no safety lock for the shutter release, so if you're going

to just toss it into a bag full of other things you need to make

sure the shutter isn't cocked. I usually cock the AE-1 immedately

after each shot, so it's ready as soon as I need it next time, so

I'll just have to try to unlearn that habit. The other habit I

need to develop is to remember to consider the zone focussing before

each shot. The AE-1 has a lovely split-prism focussing aid in the

viewfinder, so it's totally impossible to forget about focussing,

but even though the ME-35 does have a little window at the bottom

right where you can see the current setting, it's way, way too easy

to just totally forget about it. Not a good combination when strong

light means you are shooting close to wide open, but I actually

didn't ruin too many shots this way at all.

All of that said, if you're not shooting in extreme lighting

conditions and if you either already have or can easily learn the

required habits, it's a very nice little camera for travel. It's

solidly built and IMHO good looking, and the mechanics all feel

like they work nicely. Obiously it's no sustitute for an SLR or a

good rangefinder, but it definitely has it's place. I'm going to

try carrying it around with me as often as I can, in my shoulder

bag or a jacket pocket, for opportunistic snapping.

[1] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/~solderpunk/photos

EDIT: Thanks to my vintage camera buddy pkotrcka for pointing out

on Mastodon that I'd messed up my comparison of strong light

handling abilities between the Yashica and my 50mm FD lens by

comparing their widest, not narrowest, apertures! The text above

is now correct.