The Traveling Yashica: Brendan, Dublin, Ireland

When Inge tweeted about the traveling Yashica I called it fate. At the time I had a window open on my computer browsing information about compact 35mm cameras. I shoot a lot of pinhole and medium format stuff and I had been looking around for a camera that would fit in my pocket. I needed something use to document the bits of the world that I was missing while wandering thought landscapes or the streets of Dublin. Everything I read was pointing me towards the Yashica.

It arrived in Dublin just in time for a long weekend. I loaded it up with slide film, slipped it into my pocket and headed off to a couple of my usual spots to see how it fitted with my normal photographic adventures. To determine ease of use I decided not to look at any manual for the camera and opted instead to jab at the buttons like a monkey to determine what each of them did.

I discovered that I could date and time stamp the photos – this is not really something that I would have chosen to do and only found out that this can happen when I got my scans back. Fortunately this does not appear on all my shots as I continued to push random buttons the entire time I used the camera. I found the self timer and was able to pose for a self portrait and most importantly I was able to turn off the flash to see how the camera coped in low light without it. I decided to xpro the film just to see what that brought to the party.

I really enjoyed my time with the camera and am grateful to Hamish for having such a wonderful idea. The camera is fantastic and I look forward to them falling out of fashion so I can pick one up at a reasonable price.

Safe travels little camera.

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