Week 18 - The Yashica Electro 35 GSN
After looking back at a few recent ramblings, and I am happy to ramble
but admit they were a tad lengthy so I will try to pare it down a bit. So this
little Yashi Electro is mine, we had intended to run together with one of
Russells but it didn't pan out. I got her from a friend through work who said
it had sat in a shoe box for some time. It needed a now unavailable mercury
battery so a converter and suitable replacement was ordered and received for
£7. I set about checking and cleaning using the plethora of sites dedicated to
the mass produced well thought of beasty. You can find all the techy stuff
there so I will only sneak bits in where necessary but YASHICA GUY is the first
think to look up as he really knows his stuff I used his check list and
determined all was good.
A quick glance at the weather predicted for the week coupled with work
left me 2 mornings Tue/Wed and all day Thursday then it got nasty! They called
it right too. I decided run a couple of 400 speed films to give flexibility
with changing light controlling the extremes with filters and fiddling with the
film speed dial, as aperture priority you adjust exposure turning the aperture
ring between f1.7 and 22 – a nice bright lens of 45mm! The meter then sets a
speed showing a red arrow in the viewer for over and a yellow for too slow to
hand hold.
The two mornings I wandered around the city and seafront loaded with
Ilford HP5 snapping away trying different things using a yellow and orange
filter often in the rain adjusting for filters using the film speed wheel. I
tried to keep it just touching the red arrow having read it tends to over
expose, planning to pull development 10% to hold the highlight. I struggled to
be honest, the focusing was a synch with big bright finder and clear focus spot
but I kept forgetting to change the film speed and fumbled with the aperture
ring meaning I got it wrong! Under exposed and under developed! I have done
some tweaking to present better and it is all on ME!
Thursday was lovely so loading a nice Fuji Superia Xtra 400 I set off on
a quick ferry ride and walk along the river Tamar shoreline and explored an old
boat yard. I attached a polariser guessing where the optimum setting was which
is not easy on a rangefinder! I had a great few hours trying shots I wouldn't
normally really, getting to grips with her and things went far better. I set
film speed to 160 asa and left it there which, with the bright skies and filter
and trusting the meter gave great results.
Summing up I had a lot of fun. The lens is sharp enough, meters well and
if you stay within its limitations you can get a good set of pictures. She will
definitely be coming out again probably with colour film on those snappy happy
type days.
