5 Frames on the Beach with a Yashica Electro 35 GSN – by Lee Webb

I remember being in a hostel in Thailand once, just minding my own business, when another guest returned from the beach. Someone politely asked them how it was. The reply was “nice, but I couldn’t get any good photographs because there were too many people”.

The beach is perhaps a good demarcation for what kind of photography you prefer. A line in the sand, if you like. Some want postcard-like people-free sunsets. Others want photojournalistic people-filled scenes. I’m in the latter camp, which makes a crowded Chinese beach ideal for me.

Jinshan is about an hour from downtown Shanghai, and the manmade beach there is probably the best you’ll get within a reasonable distance to the city. I’m not sure it’s ever going to be too deserted but going on a public holiday, as I did, guarantees you’ll have plenty of human subjects to shoot.

The 5 frames here were shot on Fujicolor C200 in a Yashica Electro 35 GSN. It was my first time shooting this particular stock, although I knew it to be a favourite among budget-conscious film photographers who prefer not to have those warm Kodak colours. The ones that make your day on the beach look even sunnier.

When I first got the Yashica Electro, it took a roll or two to get comfortable and confident with the rangefinder focus. Fiddling with the little squares in the viewfinder was slowing me down, and even when I thought I’d got them lined up, I still wasn’t completely sure what results I was going to get.

That’s when I really learned the value of zone focus. If you’re only really shooting wide scenes with everything in focus and never mixing it up with shallow depth-of-field pictures, which is pretty much what I do, there’s no need to even change the focus between shots. So that’s what I did here.

Starting at the west end and walking east along the sand as the mid-afternoon sun began to think about going down behind me, using zone focus kept everything simple and meant I could just snap away. f8 and beach there, I think I heard someone say.

Thanks for reading my first ‘5 frames with a…’ post on 35mmc.

If you’d like to see more film photography from China and elsewhere, you can do at My Favourite Lens or on Instagram at @myfavouritelee

Lee