yashica electro 35 GX - lens quality + price

Hi. Just wanted to ask, how does the 40mm f/1.7 "color yashinon DX"

(stupid name, isn't it?) lens of the yashica electro 35 GX

rangefinder compare to others in this style/category with fast lens

(canonet ql 17, minolta hi-matic, olympus, konica, 45mm/1.7 and 1.4

yashinons on other yashica rf's etc...) Especially wide open or up

to f/2.8 . I'm not asking about MTF graphs or official test reports,

but for your personal experience about the overall satisfaction with

respect to the lens

(sharpness,contrast,distortion,bokeh,flare,colour,smell,taste,whateve

r).

 

Also, what do you think a fair price would be for it, if it's clean

and everything works okay?

 

I know that there are better rf's with fast lenses but this is what

I could buy now, relatively cheap and safe. So please don't suggest

buying a leica.

 

Thanks! and have a good light today.

Go ahead and buy the Yashica it's a good camera (provided you find one

in fair>good condition). I bought mine off e-bay to carry in the truck

for grab shots and it's been fine camera for that and more. My Canon

Ql17 focuses faster but only by a bit and not by enough to make it

better than my Yashica by any means. Overall I like the Yashica a lot.

Look on e-bay to get a feel for a fair price for whatever you buy.

They are fine. I've had one for years and years, and they take excellent photos...particularly outdoors with ASA 100 or ASA 200 film. As for the price, I suppose it depends on how nice and what has been done to the camera. Here are two things that need attention in almost every one I run across: Light seals need replacing (they are always bad), and the viewfinder is foggy (not too difficult to clean). If you need light seals, I can send a kit for $6 to the USA and $6.80 to anywhere in the world that will re-seal as many as 6 of these cameras with ease. To see it, please go to E-Bay and search "by seller". Enter my ID...Interslice, and there it will be. As for the viewfinder cleaning, there are sites on the internet (Yashicaguy, for one) that deal with that. Otherwise, go right ahead and get one. I think you'll find the picture quality in with the Canonet, Minolta Hi-Matic for sure...not quite the quality of the Konica Auto S2, in my opinion, though. If you want to buy one that has been cleaned and resealed (with leather case), please let me know. I have one I've been meaning to put on E-Bay, but just haven't yet.

 

Jon

I shot for a while with a predecessor to the Electro 35 GX when I was a kid. It took good, sharp photos. And this was at a stage in my development as a photographer that I could tell the difference - I'd also used a borrowed Pentax Spotmatic and Yashica Mat 124 (pre-G model).

 

Only reason I've passed on buying one recently is the size - it's among the largest of the consumer grade fixed lens RFs. But it's no monster, either.

 

BTW, if you decided to pop the top plate to clean inside, DO NOT try to removed the yellowing. That's not age. Yashica deliberately designed the viewfinder to be contrastier at some cost to brightness. It works, especially in dim lighting.

 

If you get one watch out you don't get hooked and start desperately fishing around the world for the accessories mated to the Electro 35 GX, such as the wide angle and tele adapters, etc.

I took my Electro35GX on a vacation last year (I had it with me the year before but the film got lost in the lab). It's a nice allrounder, with a very accurate light meter and a very decent lens. Different to most other rangefinders of this age it still has a DOF scale. I did not miss speed control very much since I mostly shoot landscapes and outdoors. And it even took nice pics inside churches with several seconds exposure (pressed firmly against the wall).

 

As mentioned by others, the viewfinder is a bit dim due to the choice of mirror material. On the other hand the rangefinder spot is much better visible than on many other cameras.

 

Usually they sell quite expensive due to their rarity. Fortunately they are much less prone to defects as the older 35G models. It does not have the notorious pad in the release mechanism, and its build quality is much better. It's a bit bigger than the Canonets etc but it is worth reserving some space.

 

The accessories for this camera are hard to find, I once ran across a tele aux lens which probably was made for this camera (or the ElectroM5, I am not sure), and I have seen close up adaptors selling for astromonical prices.

Thanks for the advices; so it seems, overally there's a positive oppinion about this fangerinder.

<p>

Walt, what do you mean by "faster focusing" canon? Is the ql17's lens with USM motor? :) Seriously, you mean you have to turn less for the same amount of distance step, or you mean it's easier to find the perfect focus through the rf ?

<p>

Jon, what do you plan to ask for your GX? Forget it, i'll send you an e-mail about it.

<p>

Lex, Winfried, yes i've just seen one on e-bay with tele and wide accessories... crazy! I will not get hooked since i consider buying it for its size(?), <b>simplicity</b> and quality for occasional low-light shots and abusive environment:).

<br>

BTW, i've read the manuals on the web, but it's still not clear: do I lock the exposure settings by pressing half-way the shutter or I just activate the meter? Because, if I lock it, i can live with the aperture-priority-only "feature" of it.<br>

Cheers.

Unfortuately there is no way to lock the light meter on the Electro35 cameras. They do not have a mechanical needle trap mechanism like the Canonet etc. They even respond to light changes during exposure - a feature well praised by Olympus when they introduced light metering on the film plane.

 

Pressing the release button simply activates the meter.

 

There are very few cameras indicating the automatically selected shutter speed in the viewfinder, such as the Zeiss-Ikon S310/S312, VoigtlaenderVF101 and Agfa Selectronic. But they also do not have any possiblitity to lock the light meter. For backlighting shots I put my finger partially over the CdS cell of the Selectronic until the speed indicator went 1 step up.

"Walt, what do you mean by "faster focusing" canon? Is the ql17's lens with USM motor? :) Seriously, you mean you have to turn less for the same amount of distance step, or you mean it's easier to find the perfect focus through the rf ? "

 

What I mean is (for my old eyes) the Canon "seems' to focus a bit faster due the the lens turn ratio,i.e. the yashica takes more movment

for a given shot to focus. To me it's really a non-issue but I wanted to give you choices.

Besides the Canonet GIII QL17 possibly having a shorter focus throw (rotation from minimum focus to infinity) - tho' I don't know whether this is a fact - some folks do like the lever/knobbie thingie attached to the left side of the Canonet's focus ring. It's designed to allow quick focusing by gripping the lever between the forefinger and middle finger.

 

Personally, tho', I've always found the Canonet's focusing to be a bit awkward and would prefer it without the focus "assist".

 

Also, a shorter focus throw isn't always a good thing. It can make for twitchy focusing and difficulty in achieving precise alignment of the rangefinder patch.

I have and have had several Yash electro range finders - GS, GSN, 35CC and a few others. Also have both sets of aux lenses.

 

My favorite are the larger models - nicest feel (the 35CC may have a glorious lense & be the most "valuable" but the shutter action feels/sounds cheap in comparison).

 

Prices are a little all over the place, but these cameras are plentiful & _should_ be cheap. Accessories are worth what someone is willing to pay.

 

If you're shopping in person, make sure the camera goes "clunk" as you wind the film on. O'wise something is broken. Try and take a battery (and adapter if needed) to ensure metering is OK.

I have just finished cleaning 2 very grungy electro 35's several days' worth of very careful scrubbing and polishing. cleaned the rangefinder lenses and camera lens almost to a "like new" look. I went to Radio Shack and bought 4 1.5 volt hearing aid batteries. I reduced the diameter of the battery compt by trimming a business card, rolling it up and stuffing it into the battery hole. I then put in the batteries, measured the remaining vacant space and factored in a bit extra because the spring inside needs to be compressed so the batteries have good contact. I solved this with a nice NAS Aerospace bolt from my junk box. Both cameras worked immediately and exposing the units to different light sources immediately showed the the shutter speeds were reacting accordingly. Next step, I took one of the units and put in a 24-exposure roll of Fuji 200 print film, shot a bunch of images and had Sam's club develop them today. Within less than 2 hours the results were in my hand showing that at least one of the units is working 1st class, a good series of exposures deliberately taken in bright sunlight show that this is still an excellent camera...

I shoot a lot of street and available light, lots after dark, and find that out of the three

Yashica's I have, GSN, CC, and GX, the GX is the most versatile. The CC and the GX are

smaller than the GSN, and both are about the same size as the Canonet GIII QL17.

They all three have different focal lengths. All the information you need is on the

Yashica-Guy site, Karen Nakamura's Photoethnography.com, and cameraquest.com -

look under compact 35's.

 

To answer your question about the lens, all three of the above cameras have

excellent lenses, if you're not shooting with primaries (you're shooting with zoom

lenses), then you're in for a pleasant surprise. I process and print my own B&W, but all

the colour and XP I shoot is done by a pro lab near our (design) studio. The guys at

the pro lab obviously see a lot of stuff shot on professional gear, and I've been asked

more than once if I use a leica. This is just anecdotal stuff, but the sharpness on these

lenses won't dissapoint you.

 

Fair price? Everyone has skirted this, at the risk of being shit-canned without mercy

(look it up in the Macquarie Dictionary), here goes. The GSN is the most common, you

should be able to get one for USD $50 or less. The GX is rare, the Black GX, even

more so - about USD $100 or more depending on who's bidding on the day. The CC

(only comes in black) is somewhere between the two in terms of rarity and price.

 

I know you haven't asked about about film, but whenever I use Portra UC colour film

in any of these camera's the guys at the pro lab go nuts!

 

I hope you get something useful out of all this, I wish you lots of fun with your new

rangefinder.

Confessions of a camera butcher: I've been very impressed with Tomioka lenses and bought a Yashica Electro GX, hoping it wouldn't work. It almost did and I wasted about half a roll. Now it is my favorite general-carry lens with my Sony A7R3 since I MacGyver-rigged it to a reverse-filter adapter. This from a recent trip to Gotland, Sweden.

 

I might be misunderstanding what equipment we're talking about. You took a non-interchangable lens from a Yashica rangefinder and somehow attached it to your Sony?

Since this thread has been brought back from the dead.

 

It's my experience that sample variation of the same nominal lens can have a greater effect than that between makes.

 

For example: I had two Canonet cameras - old style with underslung leverwind and fly's eye meter window. Their supposedly identical 45mm f/1.9 lenses were like chalk and cheese. One was superbly sharp while the other was worse than mediocre. The duff lens appeared no different from the good one, and both looked physically like new and with no signs of damage or misuse.

 

So asking about lens quality between makes and models of mass-produced cameras is a bit pointless in my opinion. Obviously, higher-priced cameras will (hopefully) have tighter quality control and use a better lens design/construction in the first place, but for cameras aimed squarely at the middle of the market, the design of lens is pretty moot. Because it's very much pot luck, together with the history and physical condition of the lens that'll determine its image quality. Not whether it was made by Yashica, Canon, Olympus, Mamiya or whoever.

Edited September 12, 2019 by rodeo_joe|1

I might be misunderstanding what equipment we're talking about. You took a non-interchangable lens from a Yashica rangefinder and somehow attached it to your Sony?

 

Yes I agree: if this is the case, then I am in awe of Stephen Morris' masochistic tendencies!

I might be misunderstanding what equipment we're talking about. You took a non-interchangable lens from a Yashica rangefinder and somehow attached it to your Sony?

Yep!

Since this thread has been brought back from the dead.

 

It's my experience that sample variation of the same nominal lens can have a greater effect than that between makes.

 

For example: I had two Canonet cameras - old style with underslung leverwind and fly's eye meter window. Their supposedly identical 45mm f/1.9 lenses were like chalk and cheese. One was superbly sharp while the other was worse than mediocre. The duff lens appeared no different from the good one, and both looked physically like new and with no signs of damage or misuse.

 

So asking about lens quality between makes and models of mass-produced cameras is a bit pointless in my opinion. Obviously, higher-priced cameras will (hopefully) have tighter quality control and use a better lens design/construction in the first place, but for cameras aimed squarely at the middle of the market, the design of lens is pretty moot. Because it's very much pot luck, together with the history and physical condition of the lens that'll determine its image quality. Not whether it was made by Yashica, Canon, Olympus, Mamiya or whoever.

 

I knew I could count on a comment about resurrecting an "old thread". And I always answer that threads like this about vintage equipment are almost timeless; they're reference works and have helped me a lot as such.

 

You obviously have had the opposite experience compared to me. So far, I've converted Yashica DX 35mm/1.8 (Electro 35 CC), DX 45mm/1.7 (Electro 35 GT), Schneider Robot-Xenon 40mm/1.9 (Robot Star 25), Zeiss-Opton Tessar T 75mm/3.5 (Zeiss-Ikon Ikonta-M), Beauty-S 45mm/1.9 (Beauty Lightomatic), H Coral 45mm/1.9 (Aires Viscount), Minoxar 35mm/2.8 (Minox 35 GT-E), Schneider Xenar 38mm/2.8 (Kodak Instamatic 500) and more. I am getting nothing but great results. At least I like them.

 

I respectfully disagree about comparisons being pointless. I find the lenses to be very consistent with their reputations. A Yashica Tomioka lens (of their premium series) is always a top-performing Tomioka. The Coral lens from a 1959 fixed-lens rangefinder is at least as good a performer as my Leitz Summicron 50. I don't think any major camera maker was sloppy with their lenses. They built their reputations on the performance of their lenses. Yashica, Canon, Konica, Minolta, Olympus, Fujica, maybe others, were praised for their laser-sharp compact camera lenses. Nor do I suspect spy-camera maker Robot cut any corners on the quality/sharpness of the lenses they used. I'm finding the Schneider Xenon can keep up with my Leitz Macro Elmarit 60 regarding resolution--and with 15 aperture blades!

 

Note, I only extract lenses from non-functioning cameras.

 

Check out other the masochists on Flickr who get amazing manual-focus performance for peanuts. Just search the name of the lenses and you will see. Some are converting lens as an enterprise. My Summicron-killing Coral costs me a whopping $5. Because of the quality, I'm having a hard time moving over to modern auto-focus lenses on my Sony A7R3.

Practically any standard lens will perform well at f/5.6 ~ f/8, but the wide-open performance varies drastically, and that's where sample variation shows up most as well.

Yashica, Canon, Konica, Minolta, Olympus, Fujica, maybe others, were praised for their laser-sharp compact camera lenses.

Pentax too got a lot of praise for their Takumar and Super-Takumar SLR lenses, back in the film era, but all the non-50mm Taks and Super-Taks that I've tried on a Sony a6000 have been pretty awful.

 

You have to remember that the double-gauss formula for a 40 to 58mm lens of f/2 (and wider) is as near to an industry standard as you're likely to find in camera optics, and the same design is still in widespread production today. It's therefore not surprising that the performance of all those lenses is very similar. However, differences are there. You just have to look slightly harder to see them.

 

And how many 50mm Planar clones does any single photographer need?

Edited September 12, 2019 by rodeo_joe|1

I guess there's some fun in doing stuff like that but you can already get old but good f/1.8 or faster 50mm primes for cheap that'll work with an adaptor, - no MacGyver-ing required.

The whole practice becomes addictive. While I lack the time (and probably the skill) to convert lenses from defunct rangefinder cameras to use on my Sonys, I have a selection, possibly in excess of 200 lenses, available for use on these cameras, using the proprietary adapters. It's a sort of process of discovery and certainly education, and often the hype surrounding certain brands and models suffers a little debunking. That's part of the fun of it all, along with discovering among the dross some surprisingly good lenses, that become constant users.

 

For instance, last week I picked up a 35-70mm Sears Auto Zoom f/3.5-4.5 in Canon FD mount, a lens that no person in their right mind would have taken a second look at. I'd noticed that it was marked "Made in Korea", which is unusual for a Sears lens, most of their photographic offerings having been sourced from Japan, as often as not from Ricoh. On testing it, once again I was pleasantly surprised, if not a little flabbergasted; the results were right up in the top echelons of lenses of this configuration in my possession. I'll now try to determine just who created it and if it appeared under other brands, a silly kind of detective work I rather enjoy. But, more importantly, I'll enjoy using it and posting some results on Photonet. Not bad for a $15 outlay...

Edited September 12, 2019 by rick_drawbridge

Practically any standard lens will perform well at f/5.6 ~ f/8, but the wide-open performance varies drastically, and that's where sample variation shows up most as well.

No kidding? So, you're assuming I don't compare lenses wide open?

Pentax too got a lot of praise for their Takumar and Super-Takumar SLR lenses, back in the film era, but all the non-50mm Taks and Super-Taks that I've tried on a Sony a6000 have been pretty awful.

The two Super Takumar 50s I tried were spectacular but I haven't tried any non-50s. I suppose I'll be careful when any come up, although I've read and seen fantastic photos by such. As you point out, there are 100s of great vintage lenses. Just a matter of sorting. These "old" discussions have been really helpful in that process.

You have to remember that the double-gauss formula for a 40 to 58mm lens of f/2 (and wider) is as near to an industry standard as you're likely to find in camera optics, and the same design is still in widespread production today. It's therefore not surprising that the performance of all those lenses is very similar. However, differences are there. You just have to look slightly harder to see them.

Good advice. Just so you know, I do look harder to see, as most here do, I'd suppose.

And how many 50mm Planar clones does any single photographer need?

As many as I can get my hands on at a bargain! I'm a recycler-reseller. As I wrote earlier, search for the lenses I listed (an other converted lenses) on Flickr. You might learn something.