The Yashica Electro 35

The Leica for the little man!

Now there's truth in advertising. If there was one camera that could outcompete any other compact on the market, it was the Electro 35. Though it sacrificed portability to features, those features were more than worthwhile: autoexposure, solid construction, and not the least its lens, the huge and superb Yashinon 45mm f/1.7, maybe the best ever to adorn a compact camera. Though the larger part of the half dozen films I shot with my Yashica came out a bit mixed due to the primitive autoexposure, the lens is beyond critique. It's so good in fact, that I'd like to see it tested against known good optics like the Nikon and Voigtländer 50mm's, or even those of Leica. Yes, it is that good.

Oh, sure I can't back that up with arguments about microcontrast or line pairs per millimeter, but trust me, it's good. Not surpringly this is a lot of people's favourite 1970's rangefinder. If you're results-based as opposed to equipment-based, this one is definitely for you, though I don't want to deny the collectability of the whole Electro series.

Sooner or later I'll continue this article with how I bought my pristine Electro for €5 as a fixer-upper, discovered that the problem was a corroded spring and broken battery wire, opened the camera with the aid of several tutorials, replaced the wire and ended up with a perfectly useful camera. But not today. So for now, just admire the pictures and move on to the next site in the search results.

Just one question to the design department: why beryllium?