5 Photographs taken with a Yashica Mat 124G in the Zócalo of Mexico City.

For those of us who have used a TLR camera, any invitation to use one again is a wonderful excuse to enjoy it. The mechanisms, the construction, the finish, the enormous waist-level viewfinders, the slow process of using them because you only have 12 frames per film, and the feel in your hands when using these cameras… it’s a unique experience.

A 24 year relationship.

I acquired my Yashica Mat 124G in early 2001 to begin shooting medium format photography. By then, film photography was beginning to suffer the ravages of the rise of digital photography, and I must admit that my enjoyment of using my Yashica Mat 124G lasted only a few years. I must have used about 50 rolls of film before I couldn’t get any more film at the beginning of the last decade. Here in Mexico, it’s not always easy to find photographic materials in stores, and film prices skyrocketed.

The Covid pandemic ended up closing almost all the stores where I used to get film, chemicals, and photographic paper… But now (thanks mainly to the fact that it’s available online), I can get film again, and I’m going to take advantage of this opportunity. When I bought this camera, I wasn’t fully aware of what a gem I was acquiring: a perfectly finished, scratch-free finish, a Yashinon lens in perfect condition and a very clean viewfinder, a hard case and strap, close-up lenses, and a Wide-Angle Auxiliary Lens. But I was able to get it at a very low price because all film cameras dropped drastically in price at the beginning of this century.

A camera from another era, ever since it was first released…

In the early 1970s, when it was released, the Yashica Mat 124G was already a camera with features that bordered on obsolescence; but the manufacturer’s greatest success was understanding the delightful user experience that a camera like this provides. The Yashica Mat 124G is an 80mm twin-lens TLR, designed by Yashica with features very similar to the Rolleiflex. For this reason, the same filters, hoods, close-up lenses, and auxiliary wide-angle and telephoto lenses can be used interchangeably on both systems. In my particular case, I was lucky enough to find my camera in a used equipment store with several accessories that I purchased separately, these included a square lens hood, a set of close-up lenses, a set of auxiliary wide-angle lenses, an adapter for mounting an electronic flash on the accessory shoe, a Yashica wide strap and a black plastic-leather hard case.

With the added advantage of being able to connect flashes via the camera’s x-contact. And with the disadvantage that the camera’s light meter uses an old Varta 625 U-LR9 1.5V alkaline battery that hasn’t been manufactured for many years. I’m lucky enough to have two of them that still work! This means I haven’t had to search for adapters to use more modern batteries. It’s worth mentioning that the light meter is quite accurate, and although I’ve heard from other users who have had problems with it, the one on my camera has worked very well for the 24 years I’ve owned it. It works so well that I haven’t had to use handheld light meters to check exposure.

A reunion that makes me happy

The “TLR Challenge” that Geoff Chaplin proposed to us last year (using, admittedly, considerably less than 50 rolls of film in a year…) is also a great excuse to grab my Yashica Mat 124G and go out and do one of the things I love most: walking around Mexico City and taking pictures. I’ve been living in Mexico City for 52 years. It’s enormous, with hundreds of years of history (it was founded in 1325 with the Aztec name of Tenochtitlan), and full of monuments and historic buildings, almost all from the era of the Spanish Viceroyalty. It’s an endless treasure trove of photographic subjects to search for, interpret, and photograph. For that reason, I chose the heart of downtown Mexico City to take my first photos after several years of not using my Yashica Mat 124G, using Kodacolor Gold 200.

A little disappointed…

I’m sharing 5 of the images I took on a Sunday in January of this year in Mexico City’s central plaza, called the Zócalo (its official name is Plaza de la Constitución). And I’ll give you a sneak peek… I didn’t like the results… The Yashica Mat124G has given me beautiful images, especially of portraits taken in gardens and in my home studio. The sharpness of the Yashinon 80mm and the very fine grain achieved due to the size of the negative have delighted me on many occasions when I’ve used it in the past.

But this time, that wasn’t the case… and I’ve identified the source of the problem: the lab that processed my film. I don’t know what method they used to develop my film (in a developer tank or using a Minilab) or the quality of the developer they used, but the result was horrible gray lines (or darker colored tones) running across my images and very dull colors (maybe they used an exhausted developer). I’ve used Kodacolor Gold many times in the past and know the results can be much better. It seems that the operators of the developing equipment now lack the experience of the old labs, where some of them had been doing this work for a lifetime… and it’s very noticeable in the final result… They only leave me with the option of finding a new developing lab or reprocessing the films at home… I’ve digitized the negatives with an Epson Perfection V660 scanner, which has always done an impeccable job, but this time the negatives didn’t help much… In the lab, they left chemical stains on the film and the aforementioned gray streaks…

Determination…

Yes, one of the photographer’s best tools: Determination. That stubborn obsession that leads us to repeat something over and over again, trying different options until the result is what we want… Anyway, the experience of using my Yashica Mat124G again is, as always, a luxury… and I will try to repeat it as many times as possible in the future. I will therefore continue walking around Mexico City with the camera in my backpack… I’m also sharing some images I took with an Olympus OM D EM10 MkII and with my cell phone that same day, which will allow you to compare results and see the beautiful light of the golden hour sunset in downtown Mexico City.

I hope this story inspires you to take your film cameras out of the closet and enjoy the process of using them…

Leonel LeyCar.

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