The Traveling Yashica: Dominik Mrzyk, Upper Silesia, Poland.

The camera came to me really quick, after a few days long travel from Ireland. I was shocked when postman told me he has something for me. 🙂

First impressions were pretty bad. Plastic, plastic, plastic. And even not the best one. My Olympus AF-10 is better built, seriously. Then: the shutter button. It’s nearly impossible to “lock-and-recompose” with this camera. I just touched button and BANG! Shoot is taken. I believe I’m used to Fed 5b, maybe that’s why I had this problem.

Next: the lens. I don’t know why, but I was sure that it has f2.8 lens. Sadly, it doesn’t. F3.5? Please, my Canon Prima has f3.6 and mentioned AF-10 f3.5…

I was really disappointed.

I put a film in Jaśka (it’s a feminine name, similar in pronunciation with “Yashica” – Jaśka – Jaszika). It is my favourite film – the cheapest – re-branded Konica VX200, expired in 2011. I’m shooting on it since 2011, so I can compare different cameras.

I took Jaśka to my fiancée, Ada. I shoot some pictures there, but I was still thinking: what’s this all about? This camera feels so cheap, so fragile, shutter button is too sensitive, winding the film isn’t the most silent…

I took it with me on my way to university. Shoot some *boring* photos.

Oh God, this camera is really boring.

The week was coming to the end. I needed to finish that roll (I had only 8 exposures taken). I told Ada that we are going to the park to take some pictures. She was pretty excited, as I told her this is the most expensive film camera from what I’ve ever had in my hands.

We shoot some photos, but after all I told her: “I don’t know if anything will look right from it”.

The next day I’ve send the camera to Ben and I drop the roll to the lab.

On Saturday I’ve had some time so I’ve scanned the roll.

And after first scan I was like “OH MY GOD I NEED THIS CAMERA BACK”.

The scans are gorgeous. I know there’s grain and colors are somewhat shifted, but it’s fault of my old scanner (Canoscan 5000f) and cheap film. But! The lens is RAZOR SHARP, focus is spot on, so-called rendering is classical Carl Zeiss… Whoa, I’ve scanned second photo and I was already checking the prices of Yashica T… 😀

So I’ve spend 5 hours scanning and reading about Yashica T series. I reminded myself about Yashica Minitec and J series, which were the poor man’s Ts… I’ve read everything what I could find about it (collection-appareils.fr is really helpful if you understand French!). I’ve found out that Yashica J2 is a T3 without some functions and with the lens from T2… And I’ve found one amazingly cheap, so I’ll be bidding! (huh, remember, I’m a student :d)

It’s all about the lens.

Thank you Hamish for the chance to try this camera!

And here you have the photos.