A new flame has come

You may recall that neighbour Nik had acquired an ancient Bolex cine camera.

He sold the body in Thailand and gave the lenses to me to sell on eBay, offering me 50% of the sales as payment for my efforts. They sold well and I was left with a tidy sum as my share; what to with this welcome windfall?

I decided that the funds should be spent on something that was also classic, black, silver and photographic; and I ended up with this:

It’s a 1967-ish Yashica 12 twin-lens reflex medium format camera and I think it is a beautiful piece of machinery. After an extended period of just looking at it, I have taken it out for a shoot and also discovered that it is a joy to use.

Those of us who have micro four thirds cameras have to suffer the taunts of those who have what they like to call “full frame” cameras. Well, full frame is a misnomer, because you can go bigger, and the next step up is known as “medium format”. The Yashica 12 is a medium format camera and the film is much larger than 35mm “full frame”.

So I bought myself some 120 film upon which the Yashica places 12 square images. The local developing shop wouldn’t touch it, so I developed it myself and noticed two immediate advantages: the film is much easier to load into a developing tank, and the negatives look lovely (can’t do anything with them yet, need a scanner that can handle them).

A future post will detail the workings of the camera and I will share some output; but I think this is going to be my film camera of choice from now on; or until Nik gives me something else to sell which just happens to be silver and black and has the word Rolleiflex on it.

Comments 🔗

2013-06-28 | Andrew says

The TLR’s are fun aren’t they? I have both a Yashicamat 124G and a Mamiya c330 - you might want to have a look at the Mamiya’s before dropping boatloads on the Rollieflex - 2 words: interchangeable lenses - the lenses are great ( as is almost all Mamiya glass ) and they are going for quite cheap considering …Keh.com has a few for $200-300 bodies and a fair assortment of lenses ( although they only offered me $90 for my near mint c330 with a 105 lens - they do make a large markup it seems ) . I took the Yashica on a trip to Vietnam and China and was pulled over by Vietnamese customs when they x-rayed it in carry-on - the guy asked what it was and I explained it was a film camera - about 50 years old I said…" Older than me!" he replied…to which I countered “almost as old as me!” - however in the end I concluded that it was not so great to travel with, not for the camera but for the constant barrage of xrays on the film - I’m sure it got hit 20 times during the trip and even though it was 50 ISO Ilford B&W I don’t have high hopes for the outcome of the negatives….we shall see…..

2013-06-29 | Spike says

I am happy to stick with just the Yashica for now. The taking lens looks a bit mouldy so I will replace that, I have ordered a new focusing screen, there is a hood on the way, and I need to learn to shoot with it. Seems very susceptible to flare (although the mould probably doesn’t help), but the first film looks promising. I really want to find a camera that is older than me; but there aren’t that many options!