Yashica TLR auxiliary Wide angle lens

StanMac · Jan 17, 2021

I have 4 Yashica TLRs ( A, D, Mat, 124G). I have a bit of a compulsion in that I like to accessorize my little beauties as much as I can. I have the Yashica TLR auxiliary telephoto lens (the utility of which is up for debate, I understand) but I’ve never seen an auxiliary wide angle lens for the TLRs. Does anyone know if such an accessory was ever made by Yashica or any other manufacturer in a Bay1 mount?

Stan

Oren Grad · Jan 17, 2021

Yes:

http://www.yashicatlr.com/AccessoriesYashicaTLR.html#auxiliarylenses

Digger Odell · Jan 18, 2021

Yes, I have both, wide and tele, and yes they both are of dubious usage. They are in nice little leather pouches. The main issue is severe viginetting. I found the whole kit, Yashica mat G, and the aux lenses at a pawn shop about 3 years ago. I offered about a 3rd of what they had it priced, the guy said no. But then another guy came over and looked at the tag and said, "it's been here a long time, you can have it at that price." And that opened the door to the rabbit hole. Meaning, it was my first medium format camera, and has lead to several more.

BAC1967 · Jan 18, 2021

I have both the telephoto and wide angle adapters, like Digger said, I got vignetting with the wide angle. Not very impressed with either. The best accessory is the closeup adapters. I have a few different off brands and like them all.

Paul Howell · Jan 18, 2021

Sell your current crop of TLRs and get a Mamiya 220 and 3 lens, 80, 55, and 105 or 135.

StanMac · Jan 18, 2021

Oren Grad said:
Yes:

http://www.yashicatlr.com/AccessoriesYashicaTLR.html#auxiliarylenses

Thanks for the link . . can't understand why I never ran across it myself.

BAC1967 said:
I have both the telephoto and wide angle adapters, like Digger said, I got vignetting with the wide angle. Not very impressed with either. The best accessory is the closeup adapters. I have a few different off brands and like them all.

Yes, I have a Spiratone set of parallax correcting close up lenses I acquired back in the late 60s for the Yashica Mat. I really haven't used the camera or the accessories I have much at all since the early 70s. I'm trying to revive my activity in this hobby, if I can shed some other time demanding obligations.

Paul Howell said:
Sell your current crop of TLRs and get a Mamiya 220 and 3 lens, 80, 55, and 105 or 135.

That would be a really nice kit, but out of my reach monetarily because I wouldn't want to part with my Yashicas.

Thanks for your responses, gentlemen. I'll start searching the auction sites to see if the wide angle set shows up.

Stan

BobD · Jan 18, 2021

I had the wide and tele set with my 124G that I bought new back in the 1980s. I used them once and was disappointed.

StanMac · Jan 18, 2021

BobD said:
I had the wide and tele set with my 124G that I bought new back in the 1980s. I used them once and was disappointed.

I probably will be too. But I will have braggin' rights if I can say, "and I have a set of auxiliary lenses as well!"

ic-racer · Jan 18, 2021

The Yashinon WA adapter is pretty nice. Certainly it is not a 50mm Distagon, but there is really no alternative. Unlike the Telephoto accessory which duplicates a simple crop in the darkroom, there is no alternative to a wide lens. You can't just "step back a few feet" because any change in subject distance changes perspective.

Of course the vignette on the corners is part of the aesthetic.

RLangham · Jan 19, 2021

I used plenty of teleconverters and other adapters my first year of photography, mostly on 35 mm with very good primary lenses. I don't really use anything like that anymore because I find that very few of them give you anything like the image quality of a prime lens.

Well, it is a sticky problem with TLR'S since all but a few are fixed lens almost by necessity, and I can understand the appeal of these front mounted adapters, but I wouldn't pay money for them. The image quality will be reduced too much for my taste.

ic-racer · Jan 19, 2021

Actually, putting the smaller 'viewing' lens on the taking lens of the camera also produces a very nice aesthetic when used wide open.

RLangham · Jan 20, 2021

ic-racer said:
Actually, putting the smaller 'viewing' lens on the taking lens of the camera also produces a very nice aesthetic when used wide open.

That's interesting. I know sometimes Yashica (as I'm sure a lot of TLR makers did) would put a cheap, simpler 2.8 as the viewing lens and a more complex 3.5 on the bottom. Never made much sense to me, since to me being able to see the DoF wide open is more interesting a feature than another half-stop of brightness. But maybe knowing that the top lens would be faster they didn't bother making the auxiliary lens for it as fast.

grahamp · Jan 20, 2021

I have an odd video camera front end converter - 0.75x for wide and 1.5x for tele - you just turn it around. It mounts onto a 46mm to bay 1 adapter. As a wide it gives significant barrel distortion, and sharpness adequate for a contact print...

I put it on the 55mm wide for the Mamiya TLR once. The result looks like a fish-eye with the barrel distortion, but without the actual angle of view. Interesting, but not generally useful.

This item was designed for a video camera, so the expected imaged area would be from the center and the effective format is much smaller than 35mm. Put it on a 120 format and the optical limitations really show up.

BAC1967 · Jan 20, 2021

ic-racer said:
Actually, putting the smaller 'viewing' lens on the taking lens of the camera also produces a very nice aesthetic when used wide open.

Now I need try that. Do you have an example you can share?

davela · Jan 20, 2021

One such technology, the Rollei Mutar (Tele and Wide) due a darn good job with slight vignetting evident at wider apertures, at least for the 0.7 Mutar. The Bay I versions would probably work fine with a Yashica. These are frightfully expensive these days however, if they can be found at all!

Yashica TLR auxiliary Wide angle lens

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