I’d been looking for a half-frame camera for a long time. Less film, more frames – a traveler’s dream. One day on eBay I found this legendary Yashica; 1965, excellent condition, working order and only 800 rubles (13$)! I quickly contacted the seller and a week later held it in my hands. But my joy was not long lived; it turned out that I did not read the description properly and as a result I bought a Rapid version of the camera. This meant I needed special rapid cassettes which have not been available for about 30 years…
But, thanks go out to the seller as he added 2 empty cassettes to the camera. After several weeks of experiments, I learned how to not only quickly charge the film for 24/48 frames (standard for rapid), but also how to remove this restriction and use 36/72 rolls of film!
The camera is beautiful! Yes, it is a bit heavier than I thought, but you only notice it for the first couple of days. The lens is great, you just need to learn how to calculate the scale of distances correctly.
The exposure meter works fine, and there’s almost no flawed images. So after a while, and some spoiled film, this is my favourite pocket camera for travel! The result is still sometimes unpredictable because of my focusing skills, but the pleasure of the process can not be replaced by anything!
I develop black and white by myself and have a lab develop the color rolls. The shots below are from a roll of expired Kodak Ultramax 400, scanned on my Canon 9000f. The light leaks are the result of my experiments with full 36 film rolls.
I’d be happy to answer any questions!
11 Comments
Andrew Swingler
September 10, 2018 at 12:43 pmI have a Fujica half with a moderately similar design to your Yashica. In terms of looks and build quality its my favourite camera, it’s a little heavy like you mentioned about yours. I like that though! They really don’t make them like they used too!
I like the shot in the Car, really cool!
denissavinov
September 15, 2018 at 9:16 amThank you Andrew! Fujica is great! 👍🏻
James
September 10, 2018 at 7:09 pmNice. Very pretty camera & well done for overcoming the obstacles in putting it to good use!
denissavinov
September 15, 2018 at 9:14 amThank you James!
Sebastiaan
March 27, 2019 at 12:54 pmNice post, And nice pictures. Could you tell me how you use the 36/72 rolls?
All the Best
Etienne
March 28, 2019 at 11:48 amHello Denis
Thanks for the story.
I have myself bought one online not reading enough and now I can’t use it because of the film situation.
Could you give me any tips on how to charge film? Is there any possibilities without empty cassettes?
denissavinov
March 28, 2019 at 1:46 pmHello Etienne, thank you for reading my story. As far as I understand you don’t have rapid cassettes so the approach is very simple. I go into the darkroom, take the new 35 film out of the cassette and hand-twist it into a narrow roll. This roll I insert into the left empty place of the camera (so you don’t even need rapid cassettes) and a tail of a film I transfer to the right to hook perforation of a film on a scroll wheel. I close the back lid and rewind the film to the first frame as usual. It’s probably hard for the first time and maybe the film will not go as it should, but after some practice I got how to do it right. When you start shooting after 24 frames you will know that camera has a limiter and after 24 frames it blocks the shutter button. To remove it, you just need to open and close the back lid (in the dark of course so not to expose the film). After that, the counter will reset and you can continue to take pictures. After taking all 72 frames – go to darkroom, pull out the film and put it in a standard black tank. Then you take it to the lab and don’t forget to tell the lab that film in tank is without cassette ))
Hope it will help! Good Luck!
Daniel
October 24, 2019 at 4:39 pmI bought a Yashica Half Rapid 17 ee. Unfortunatly, the lightmeter is not working, as it appears. Any Ideas on how to fix / replace that?
Cheers
Daniel
Daniel
October 24, 2019 at 4:44 pmSorry for double posting, but I forgot to ask: If you give your film to a photo lab, wont they cut every 2nd image, because of the half format?
because it goes something like
|X||X||X||X||X||X||X||X||X||X| <- half frame
|XX||XX||XX||XX||XX||XX| <- regular frame
opposed to a regular film?
Daniel
October 24, 2019 at 11:03 pmOne more thing I dont get: Is every aperture coupled with a specific shutter speed?
As I understood it: You select an aperture and the camera set’s the shutter speed. Or is it that I just select a pair of aperture and shutter according to the EV value measured by the camera?
I need some clarification because I don’t get it…
Cheers again
Daniel
Jean-Paul
December 17, 2019 at 1:33 pmAperture is coupled by speed. The shutter is a two leaf shutter that also functions as the diaphragm.