First roll through the Yashica-C

[jp498]

I'd been given a Yashica-C TLR 20+ years ago. The shutter was bit off when I got it, so it didn't get used for much; just a roll or two to show it worked, but it didn't meet my needs then. Fast forward, the imitation leather had cracked off and the shutter was a little more off. But I'm rediscovering film these day. (With primary interest in LF B&W) I like the square format of 6x6 and the relative portability of MF.

Sent it off to http://www.deansphotographica.com/ for a CLA and new pleather. Came back looking nice and with a smooth and accurate shutter. And the work was done on schedule for a reasonable price.

Got some Fomapan 100 film, which I've never used before for this testing. Had a roll of 400 which I'd run through a Rolleiflex a month or so ago but found 400 too grainy.

With the Yashica, I guessed the outdoor exposure. Shot the obligatory brick wall, then a scene with a lot of dynamic range. Then I brought it inside, hooked up a white lightning monolight with umbrella to my Minolta flashmeterV to get a reading. Then I hooked up the Yashica and used up the rest of the film.

I processed it in Xtol 1:2 for 8.5 minutes and the next day scanned the negatives on my V700 at 3200 dpi.

The film is good; quite good for the price; very forgiving of exposure. Good range. Perhaps not as crisp as tmax 100, but that's not what it is. It's a decent film for outdoor and portraits. I would probably want to use a meter for outdoor photography with tmax.

This yashica-C does not have the desirable version of the lens found on the 124/124g. I really can find no fault with this "lesser" lens as it was used by me (mid range aperature choices). Wide open, I don't expect perfection and it might be nice for portraits; haven't done any wide open tests yet.

Challenging Outdoor light; sunny day, white building, shadows, dark rust colored Indiana sculpture. "Sunny 8" exposure; Maine is rarely bright enough for sunny16, so it's sunny11 with an extra stop to expose for the shadows particular to this scene.

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100% crop
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Indoor skintones
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Cropped and downsized about 33%
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prefocused the camera, wound it, cocked it, set the finder to sport mode and handed it to my 4yo. Told her to get a picture of me.
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Inevitably, she asked to see the picture afterwards, without looking to see that it didn't have an LCD screen. I'll give her a couple more years to figure out rule-of-thirds.

 

[Ektagraphic]

Great work!!! Nice to know film continues in Maine!

 

[Hikingman]

Enjoyed those, thanks for sharing!

 

[Voyager13b]

Nice!

 

[lns]

Adorable baby! And your 4-year-old did a nice job. Add in the TLR, and you are a lucky man.

-Laura

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

You might want to check the focusing alignment - in the baby shot it looks like it is focusing close: the hands are in perfect focus but the eyes aren't (could just be the one shot, but the top picture also looks like it could be sharper).

 

[Anscojohn]

JP,
Nice testing. You have it right when you state the Yashikor lens is capable enough when stopped down.
Regarding possible focus error: in a former life-time when I had a summer job doing children's home portraits (gack, whaddajob!) we made sure to focus on the catchlight in the child's eye. We even carried a small flood we switched on whilst focussing to provide a catchlight when the ambient light was too low for a crisp catchlight. Exposure was by strobes, tho.

And we were issued Yashica Ds, with the same lens you have in your "C".

 

[jp498]

Thanks for the focusing suggestions and other comments.

Next roll, I'll test the focus more critically with some wide open shooting. I'll try some different films too. I've been down the focus testing path before with my D300 dslr.

The baby was pretty animated and I was using the flash at full power (which WL says is a 1/300s flash), so it could actually be motion blur or the baby moving out of the focus area contributing to the results.