Yashica Electro 35 GT – Finding a Rangefinder – By Francois Marlier
My name is François, and I’m a 30 year old born in Belgium and currently living in Denmark. When I was around 15, my granddad gave me his Canon AE-1, describing it to me at the time as one of the most sold and easiest to use film cameras. This is how I started shooting, and continued shooting for a couple of years, on and off, mostly leaving the aperture on automatic and not much understanding all the subtleties and possibilities of photography.
Then in 2009-2010, as I was getting more interested and with digital SLRs all the rage, my families gifted me a Canon 500D with a 18-250 Sigma lens, which I used quite intensely, learning more about the exposure triangle, trying long exposures and light painting in the dark; shooting family events and then parties at university, and more or less letting my grandad’s camera collect dust.
In 2015, I then sold my Canon 500D and bought a second-hand Fuji film X100s – never having been a huge fan of (nor really getting skilled at) editing my photos, the Fuji was a perfect companion – good lens, fairly compact, stylish, great jpegs. And I still have it to this day.
The call of film
But then, during the pandemic, I was like many people looking for something to help me pass the time, and decided to get back into film.