What's going on with my Yashica GSN?

reub2000 · Aug 22, 2006

I was playing around with Yashica Electro 35 GSN, and noticed that if I turned the aperture ring many stops past where the slow light turned on, and pressed the shutter button, the shutter would stay open until I pulled the film wind lever. However with faster shutter speeds it seems fine, and the roll of film to I used with it and developed seemed fine. Is this problem just isolated to longer exposures?

Gerald Koch · Aug 22, 2006

I believe that Yashica's literature says that shutter times are accurate down to 8 seconds but many people find that even longer times are possible. What you are seeing is perfectly normal and there is nothing wrong with your camera. I have seen examples of night shots where the exposure was something like 20 to 30 seconds. This is what makes these cameras popular for night photography.

Anupam Basu · Aug 22, 2006

Gerald Koch said:
I believe that Yashica's literature says that shutter times are accurate down to 8 seconds but many people find that even longer times are possible. What you are seeing is perfectly normal and there is nothing wrong with your camera. I have seen examples of night shots where the exposure was something like 20 to 30 seconds. This is what makes these cameras popular for night photography.

This is true. Just leave your camera on for what you expect to be the exposure - 30 sec to one minute and see if the shutter eventually closes. If it NEVER closes, then you might have a problem.

As an aside, I wonder if these light meters for A or S priority RFs figure any sort of reciprocity into these really long exposures.

-A

Gerald Koch · Aug 22, 2006

Anupam Basu said:
As an aside, I wonder if these light meters for A or S priority RFs figure any sort of reciprocity into these really long exposures.

This would be very hard to do since the reciprocity correction varies with the particular film being used. Some films required a greater correction than others.

Anupam Basu · Aug 22, 2006

Gerald Koch said:
Some films required a greater correction than others.

Of course, but even a general reciprocity correction - say a factor of 1.5 - is less bad than pretending none is required, surely?

-A

Gerald Koch · Aug 22, 2006

Correction for reciprocity is usually left to the photographer. AFAIK, no in-camera meter makes such a correction. The meter circuit in the Electro 35's is very simple and unsophisticated. For these cameras any correction can be done by changing the film speed.

reub2000 · Aug 22, 2006

Anupam Basu said:
This is true. Just leave your camera on for what you expect to be the exposure - 30 sec to one minute and see if the shutter eventually closes. If it NEVER closes, then you might have a problem.

As an aside, I wonder if these light meters for A or S priority RFs figure any sort of reciprocity into these really long exposures.

-A

I figure that it's doing this at exposures longer than 1/4th of a second.

Anupam Basu · Aug 22, 2006

Gerald Koch said:
Correction for reciprocity is usually left to the photographer. AFAIK, no in-camera meter makes such a correction. The meter circuit in the Electro 35's is very simple and unsophisticated. For these cameras any correction can be done by changing the film speed.

Gerald, I know it's left to the photographer - that's what I do. But especially in a A-priority only cameras that DON'T let the photographers dial in any compensated shutter speed, some sort of built in elongation of the time would be better than nothing (of course you can tweak the ISO and such - but that is way too roundabout).

I also know that these cameras probably don't do that - but I am just saying that the long exposure feature would be more useful if they did.

-A

What's going on with my Yashica GSN?

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