I’d been given a Yashica-C TLR 20+ years ago. The shutter was bit off when I got it, so it didn’t get used for much; just a roll or two to show it worked, but it didn’t meet my needs then. Fast forward, the imitation leather had cracked off and the shutter was a little more off. But I’m rediscovering film these day. (With primary interest in LF B&W) I like the square format of 6×6 and the relative portability of MF.

Sent it off to http://www.deansphotographica.com/ for a CLA and new pleather. Came back looking nice and with a smooth and accurate shutter. And the work was done on schedule for a reasonable price.

Got some Fomapan 100 film, which I’ve never used before for this testing. Had a roll of 400 which I’d run through a Rolleiflex a month or so ago but found 400 too grainy. 

With the Yashica, I guessed the outdoor exposure. Shot the obligatory brick wall, then a scene with a lot of dynamic range. Then I brought it inside, hooked up a white lightning monolight with umbrella to my Minolta flashmeterV to get a reading. Then I hooked up the Yashica and used up the rest of the film. 

I processed it in Xtol 1:2 for 8.5 minutes and the next day scanned the negatives on my V700 at 3200 dpi.

The film is good; quite good for the price; very forgiving of exposure. Good range. Perhaps not as crisp as tmax 100, but that’s not what it is. It’s a decent film for outdoor and portraits. I would probably want to use a meter for outdoor photography with tmax.

This yashica-C does not have the desirable version of the lens found on the 124/124g. I really can find no fault with this “lesser” lens as it was used by me (mid range aperature choices). Wide open, I don’t expect perfection and it might be nice for portraits; haven’t done any wide open tests yet.

Challenging Outdoor light; sunny day, white building, shadows, dark rust colored Indiana sculpture. “Sunny 8” exposure; Maine is rarely bright enough for sunny16, so it’s sunny11 with an extra stop to expose for the shadows particular to this scene.

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100% crop

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Indoor skintones

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Cropped and downsized about 33%

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prefocused the camera, wound it, cocked it, set the finder to sport mode and handed it to my 4yo. Told her to get a picture of me.

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Inevitably, she asked to see the picture afterwards, without looking to see that it didn’t have an LCD screen. I’ll give her a couple more years to figure out rule-of-thirds.via First roll through the Yashica-C.