A friend of a friend was clearing out some stuff after her Grandad died and found this Yashica 35 – it was subsequently passed onto me. I was confused at first as I only new about the Electro 35, and this wasn’t one of them but thanks to Mike Eckman I found out about it’s history. You can read Mike’s post about it here
Now can I just say that before this M6, I’d never shot a Leica, I’d only actually held one for a few seconds 10 years ago so I came to this wondering if all the hype was really justified. Anyhow, when this nice bloke with a Scottish sounding Christian name said “Fancy borrowing an M6 for a few weeks” I jumped at the chance.
On holiday in Northumberland, and needing to kill till time whilst wife and daughter were shopping, I wandered into an Antiques shop and was confronted by a Pentax Spotmatic with Takumar 50mm f/1.8. Now this is probably heresy but it was the dainty lens that I was attracted to not the camera, I know Spotmatics are legendary but I’m not a fan of cameras built like a tank however good they are… never had a Zenith either…
Firstly can I just say that this review is all the fault of Simon Forster from the Classic Lenses Podcast. Why you may ask, well having dragged me into the world of Classic Lenses he then appeared on the Sunny 16 podcast and I was hooked into the world of film too.
I won’t bore you with a life history, suffice to say I have been photographing for 42 years through manual focus, onto autofocus, onto digital with AF everything; and then for the past 18 months firstly manual lenses, and then back to film.
