View allAll Photos Tagged electro
Found this at a local shop. Very nice condition for being nearly forty-years-old. Found out it takes a HUGE PX32A battery. The thing is about as big as a roll of candy. At 6.0V, it's about half what you need to start your car, and is almost big enough to do so.
Hard to see here, but the Electro AX has a large prism area, wider and taller than contemporary cameras. Probably due to the space needs of early electronics. When you wind the camera, the lens stops down and the light meter goes to work. The camera has an automatic mode, but this stop-down system probably didn't earn the camera points for ease of use.
I modded my Yashica Electro GT to be used in full manual mode by adding shutter speed control. Actually it is nothing more than a handful of resistors crammed under a dial switch. Beta stage means numbers written on paper disc; resistors easily spottable. Once i get the results from the test film, i may replace those resistors with smd ones for more prettyness. Or i just smudge more hotglue around them. Anyway, the software scope in my pc shows pretty nice results, so I just inserted the first roll to test it. My Lunasix is already giggeling all the day after the long depression it had over the advent of digital photography. Boy am I happy this seems to work!
A recent visitor to my photostream asked for my thoughts on the these two cameras. Random and rambling as they are, I'm posting them here In case they're useful to anyone else...
The GT was my first rangefinder and I've shot half a dozen or so rolls with it. I've been extremely pleased with the results, and I enjoy using it a lot. I've found its meter to be astonishingly accurate (I ran a slide film through in various lighting conditions and it was bang on every time). I haven't tested the CC's meter in the same way yet, but I've no reason to think it any different. I've shot black & white more with the CC and have been very pleased. The leaf shutters of both cameras are very quiet and unobtrusive. They are both solid, hefty cameras, the CC a bit lighter and more compact. Of the two, I find it more comfortable to grasp the GT, having long fingers. The lenses on both deserve their great reputation. Personally, I prefer a focal length greater than 35mm, so I lean towards the GT more. For me, the parallax-corrected framelines of the GT have the edge: the CC's uncorrected viewfinder is a bit disappointing after using it, with the end of the lens clearly visible at all focusing distances.
A few other technical things to be aware of:
- the CC has no depth of field markings on the lens barrel, unlike the GT
- the CC's ISO range is only 25-500 (the GT has 25-1000)
- the GT also has bulb and flash modes; the CC doesn't have either
- the CC accepts a "regular" filter size of 52mm, as against 55mm on the GT; I use 55-52mm reducer on the GT without problems
- relatedly, the CC meters through filters, whereas on the GT you must compensate manually.
Some quirks I've noticed:
- I find it easy to dislodge the lid of the CC's battery compartment, which is right next to my thumb when shooting.
- The short lens barrel of the CC means the aperture ring is close to the focusing collar, so it's easy to alter focus by mistake when changing aperture.
- Focusing direction: infinity is at the left hand end with the CC, but on the right with the GT.
Some mechanical niggles:
- The battery check buttons have been problematic on both, with the connecting wires breaking or coming unsoldered. But you don't really need them if your under-/overexposure lights work (though these only function if the shutter's cocked). I like the fact that on the GT, they're visible on the top plate, whereas with the CC they're only in the viewfinder.
- If you buy one that hasn't been serviced recently, its "Pad of Death" is likely to cause strange problems. If you're willing to have a go yourself, it's not too hard to fix. My two came to me with this exact problem, and I still managed to fix them myself. They were the first two cameras I'd ever taken apart, and I'm not particularly technical.
In summary, in terms of price and considering their age, I can't rate Electro 35s highly enough. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another GT(N)/GSN. I think with the CC you're paying mainly for scarcity as well as more compactness, but to my mind a lower spec overall. But then I would really like to try the still rarer and more expensive GX...
I have some pens and pencils.
A moleskine.
And a head full of quotes, lyrics and the like.
Come and see them at Quoteskine.tumblr.com
I don't think...
Although one's face become more beautiful...
one's real beauty don't become
more valuable...
The real beauty comes from one's inner side...
I think so...
Groove Electro Jazz Party @ CCM John Lennon Festival Jazz "Eclats d'émail" édition 2007 Nicole Graham