Yashica page

Welcome to Peter's
Yashica Page

Y knowledge of Yashica history is rather shaky but I believe it goes back to the 1920s as Tomioka Optical Laboratory. After the war the company changed its name to Tomioka Optical and Machine Manufacturing Co. It's lenses were used by Nicca in 35mm Leica insprired cameras, and in the late 1950s Tomioka bought Nicca and produced cameras with the name Yashica carrying lenses named Yashinon, though it was not till the late 1960s that the company was renamed Yashica.
From the late 1950s until it was absorbed into Kyocera in 1983, Yashica poured out a vast range of rangefinder 35s, roll-film twin lens reflexes and single lens reflex 35s. I have three of its rangefinders, two Ministers and a model J.

APART from the metering, these two Ministers are near enough identical. They are quite large coupled rangefinder fixed lens 35mm. And they are, without question, the smoothest operating

Ministers are large, quite heavy, and very smooth to use. This is the Model D with CdS meter.

mechanical rangefinders I've come across. I can hand hold at 1/15 sec, and the neg will blow up to 8x6 with no problem. The viewfinders are nice and clear with a well defined rangefinder spot, and a brightline frame with indications for parallax. On my Minister III the brightline moves about if you give the camera a slight jolt, and you have to tap the body to bring it back again. I must have the top off some time to fix it, and when I do I'll take some poictures and put them on the My Repairs page.
     Both cameras have meters built into the top scaled in exposure values. After you set the ASA the needle will point to a number which, on the Minister III, you transfer to a ring on the front of the lens. This will automatically move the aperture setting ring or, in the case of the Model III, the aperture that appears in a window in the lens barel. When you move the speed ring the aperture alters with it to give you the exposure at any speed.
     The difference between the metering systems is that the Minister III has a large selenium cell round rthe outside of the lens. The Minister D has a small CdS cell on the front of the top plate next to the viewfinder window. The selenium cell has the advantge that if you put a filter on the front it automatically allows for the increase in exposure whereas on the D you have to remember the filter exposure factor.
     Both cameras have a 45mm f/2.8 Yashinon lens - what, you say. Only f/2.8? Yes, 'only' f/2.8, but I'd have to dig deep in my memory, or morte likely consult my negative files, to find out when I last used an aperture larger than f/2.8. I've got a sneaking suspicion you would, too. Both lenses give excellent results, sharp to the edges even at f/2.8, I bought both cameras together from a part-time dealer. Both are in excellent + condition, and, apart from the loose brightline frame on the Minister III, work faultlessly. He'd had them in stock for quite a time, and had offered them on Ebay with a starting bid of £9.99 each but didn't get a single bid on either. Eighteen months ago they would have fetched between £35 and £40 each with no trouble. I offered £15 for the two, and he accepted. He seemed pleased, and I certainly was.

Bargain basement Yashica rangefinder

THIS is a sort of bargain basement Yashica rangefinder, or entry model if you like PR language. Like the others it's very smooth to use, and the rangefinder spot is bright and clear. The finder has a brightline frame with parallax markings, and the lens is a Yashinon f/2.8. So where does the bargain basement part come in? For a start the f/2.8 Yashinon is a four-glass lens in three groups similar, I imagine, to a Tessar layout, whereas the Minister lenses are five-glass. There's no meter, and the shutter is somewhere at the bottom of the range of Copals with only four speeds from 1/25 to 1/300 sec.
I picked it up in a charity shop with the lens so gummed up with old oil that at any speed setting it took about 2 seconds to operate. It was like watching a shutter in slow motion. But the asking price was only £2 so I didn't argue. About half an hour's work on a CLA saw the shutter performing well on all its speeds, but I haven't tried a film in it so I can't compare the results with those from the Ministers.