I’ve said very little about it here as I write this review in October 2021, but for over a year now, I’ve been slowly, methodically gravitating toward repairing and restoring cameras, and developing a workbench and collection of tools to do so. First it was the Zeiss Jena Biotar lens on my Exakta. Then I managed to get a couple of Zeiss Ikon Contina II cameras running (a model which still needs its own review here). Then a Graflex Graphic 35. Bit by bit, my confidence and knowledge levels rose in the face of (or perhaps because of) a few notable failures. And while I still know my limits (e.g., complex cameras don’t belong on my repair bench), I nevertheless relish tackling basket case cameras in horrible cosmetic condition just to see what (if anything) I might be able to do to get them working and looking acceptable again. Such was the case recently with a very tired, non-working, aesthetically bankrupt Yashica-D — one of the many twin lens reflex (TLR) models to come out of the Yashica factories over the course of the company’s existence.
The Back Story
Honestly, I should have turned and run away from the eBay listing for this Yashica-D. Not many photos. Two of them were blurry to the point where I asked myself why the seller would bother including them. And the photos that were clear were not encouraging. Then there was the extensive (yeah, right) seller description of the item. Let me quote it for you in its entirety:
Yashica D TLR Medium Format 120 Roll Film Camera w Yashikor 80mm Lens AS-IS V11. Shutter doesn’t cock or fire. Otherwise camera is in decent shape.
It didn’t look terrible, I suppose, but not great, either:
But the price, US$49, was cheap for a decent TLR. And apparently under the influence of a single glass of wine, I bought it. On reflection, I violated my own price tolerance limits in buying cameras that are complete unknowns; I generally don’t spend more than I’m willing to toss into a fireplace on a complete gamble, and $49, for the record, is not a sum of money I’d be comfortable watching go up in smoke.
With the deed done, however, the camera arrived within days, and the full aftermath of my hasty buying decision became evident. The shutter did not cock or fire, which was disclosed by the seller. But beyond that, a spot weld on the top cap of the viewfinder had failed — a fact not disclosed by the seller. Clearly it’d failed some time ago, as the paint loss caused by the loose piece rubbing the camera body was significant.
The aluminum edges of the body casting were all covered with gray corrosion. The leatherette needed replacement, but worse, the front leatherette had been reglued carelessly and improperly, which resulted in glue residue evident around the edges of the coverings and slopped onto both the outer and inner metal covers around the lens and shutter assembly. And to top it all off, it was disgustingly dirty — filthy to the point I wanted to handle it with disposable gloves. There’s a word for something like this, and that word is derelict. In fact, it was one of the worst cameras to make its way to my workbench so far, and I wasn’t convinced that saving it was within my capabilities.
To make an extraordinarily long story shorter, I set about tackling everything as methodically as I could. I addressed the failed spot weld with a small dot of epoxy and a tiny clamp. Then I set about removing the front leatherette, as I’d need to get access to the innards underneath. This was, in short, not an easy job, as the completely improper glue was used. Hours later, I’d managed to get most of it removed, and both the front and inner covers out, revealing the Copal shutter, the camera’s lenses, and the plate to which they were attached. A bit of finessing, and I even got the shutter extracted.
The Copal shutter is not terribly unlike the Gauthier shutters I’ve worked on dozens of times now, and getting the shutter cleaned and going again was straightforward, although it did demand that the blades were removed, individually cleaned, then re-set — not uncommon in cameras of this age.
That was not, unfortunately, the end of the story. Once the shutter itself had been serviced and was working, I realized that the aperture wasn’t cutting it. Any attempt to move the adjustment lever, and the aperture blades bulged rather like a pan of Jiffy Pop that’s just starting to fill with popped corn. Not good. It was also abundantly clear that the blades were — like the shutter blades — covered in brown filth. And while I couldn’t really smell the evidence of being in a smoker’s home, the color of the residues and the sheer amount of meticulous cleaning needed is consistent with having been in an environment with smokers for many years.
Getting the aperture apart was the easy bit. Getting it back together after the blades were individually and painstakingly cleaned was an exercise in frustration, primarily just figuring out how to do it without the factory jigs that doubtlessly made the task far easier back in the day. Each of the 10 blades has a small pin on either end, on reverse sides. Those pins rest in holes in two plates that sandwich the blades in between, and their position has to be exact, or the aperture mechanism won’t fit together or operate. Multiple attempts were needed even once I’d figured-out a process, but eventually, with hours of time invested, it was reassembled and functioning beautifully.
Getting the camera back together as a whole was far easier, and primarily involved cleaning (viewfinder mirror and ground glass, all sides of all lens elements, polishing aluminum body casting areas and metal parts, etc.). I had already ordered new leatherette from CameraLeather.com, so old coverings were removed — a bit of a hassle as it always is — and the new ones installed.
Before reassembling the camera, it was necessary to replace the small plastic window over the aperture and shutter speed scales, as the original was badly yellowed and cracked. A small piece of vacuum-formed PET plastic from the shell of a retail package made a good source, as it was crystal clear, and the necessary thinness; I merely used the original as a template, and cut it out using a sharp X-Acto hobby knife. I also chose to touch-up the fill painting in the engravings on the focus dial, and touch-up the red, yellow and green dots on the ends of the various levers around the lens.
In the end, this non-working, rough-looking wreck of a TLR was brought back to life. Thankfully, functionality like the film advance mechanism was still working nicely and required no intervention, and the optics were clear, free of marks, fungus and coating flaws, allowing everything to come back to life quite nicely.
Of course, this camera would never win any beauty contests. While it looks far better than it did when it arrived, it’s had a hard life full of obvious neglect, and the full scope of that is impossible to reverse. On the other hand, it still has a lot of life left in it, and if the camera could talk, I’d like to think it’d be appreciative of the fact that someone finally showed it a little care and attention, and bestowed upon it a new sense of purpose.
The Camera
The Yashica-D was merely one of many stops on the continuum of Yashica TLRs, a line launched with the Pigeonflex in 1953 when the company was still called Yashima Optical Co. Ltd. The “D” was launched in November 1958 according to Paul Sokk’s outstanding web site, yashicatlr.com. In fact, Paul’s site is the reference for anything Yashica TLR related, and I’ll simply defer to him and his voluminous details to fill-in the rest of the blanks — other than the “D” finally ending production in 1972, a pretty impressively long run.
As TLRs go, the Yashica-D is fairly ordinary. It adheres to what might be called the Rolleiflex Design Model, which means that a front standard to which the lenses and shutter are affixed moves in and out from the camera body as a unit when you focus. (Contrast this to things like an Argoflex E, with its geared lenses on a stationary body.) In fact, looking at the Yashica-D, or virtually all the Yashica TLRs, and it’s hard not to see them as direct ripoffs of the Rolleiflex and Rolleicord cameras. Of the two, the Yashica-D is most analogous to the Rolleicord, due primarily to its knob-based film advance with automatic stop (and corresponding automatic frame spacing). This style of advance is simple and reliable, if not as sexy as the winding arm/lever approach of the Rolleiflex and Yashica models like the Mat-124G.
What might be off-putting for some is the lens design of the Yashica-D. My particular example, and indeed most of them, feature Yashica’s “Yashikor” lens, which was used in the cameras until 1970, when it was changed to the “Yashinon” lens. As Paul Sokk points out, these are simply brand names, and not an explicit reference to a lens formula. But while Yashinon-branded lenses exist in both triplet and Tessar-type designs, for the Yashica-D specifically, Sokk suggests that Yashinon lenses are a Tessar-type, while the Yashikor lenses are definitely triplets.
I used the words “off-putting for some” because it seems that there are a sizable number of photographers who hear the words “triplet lens” and go running in the opposite direction as fast as possible, toward the promised land of Tessars and double-Gausses and Sonnars. I’m not a physicist, I’m not an optical engineer and I’m not even sure I could successfully pass a basic algebra test, so I clearly should stick to things I actually know. But until I prove to myself otherwise (which I’m actively trying to do), I’ll climb-up on my soapbox and stand by this belief: A well-designed, well-implemented triplet lens is at least 90% as good as the average Tessar design lens. I have yet to see evidence — my own or from anyone else — to suggest I’m too far wrong on that point.
After personally repairing and restoring several dozen cameras so far — the vast majority of them sporting triplet lens designs — and then film-testing every one of them, I’m well aware of the fact that just as every lens design is not the same, not every implementation of every lens design is the same either. They’re not even the same within the same design and implementation, as I’ve observed numerous times with one simple, low-cost camera: the Kodak Pony. All the early Pony cameras have triplet lenses of a virtually identical design, but if you’ve seen the image quality level of, say, a Kodak Pony 135 Model C, then you’ve seen the image quality of precisely one Kodak Pony 135 Model C. Some are actually quite good. Others are uneven. Some have extreme corner softness, while others are reasonably sharp. I own several Pony cameras, and have seen all of those variations and more.
Granted, the price point of the Pony 135 when originally made probably has a lot to do with that variation, but the point here is that dismissing Cooke triplet lenses as universally bad and Tessar-type (or any other) lenses as universally superior is to dismiss an endless array of cameras that are capable of providing not just a tremendous amount of enjoyment, but beautiful images as well. In film photography, we accept the challenges. We accept that film can behave differently when over- or under-exposed. Or that chemical temperature impacts the results. Or scanning variations do. And yet, somehow, there’s a large contingent who won’t accept anything less than perfect sharpness, perfect contrast, perfect grain, or indeed, perfect results.
Alas, the Yashica-D will not provide that. I generally wouldn’t confuse an image shot with my Yashica-D for one shot with my Hasselblad 503CW and its modern Carl Zeiss Planar lens, but while Yashica’s results are not perfect, as you’ll see later, they’re quite good. So naysayers be damned, the camera and its Yashikor lens is a keeper.
As mentioned earlier, film advance in the Yashica-D is fairly simple. When loading the film, one aligns the start arrow on the backing paper to marks under the back cover; the back is then closed. From there, simply twist the advance knob until it stops automatically at the first exposure. Simple.
The Yashica-D requires manual cocking of the shutter prior to shooting, performed with the green-tipped lever on the photographer’s right side. The lever returns to the starting position afterward, vs. staying in the end position. Once cocked, the shutter speed can still be changed, even to the camera’s fastest speed of 1/500 (which is not possible on my Rolleiflex Automat MX). As with Rolleiflex and Rolleicord, the speed and aperture, as mentioned earlier, are set with small dials on the front of the camera, and you can observe their values through a clear window visible from the top of the camera. When a shot is taken, one presses the button on the middle of the advance knob, which unlocks the advance, and the film is wound until it again stops. Frame spacing is automatic, and while not perfectly even frame-to-frame on my camera, results in clear separations for ease in scanning or darkroom enlarger printing.
The camera sports a self-timer, which is wound with the red-tipped lever; shutter cocking is done separately, either before or after winding the timer. Pressing the shutter release button gets everything started. Finally, as referenced before, there’s a lever — yellow-tipped — for switching between X and M flash sync.
There’s really little else to the camera. Of note, there is no conventional cable release port on the Yashica-D cameras that I’ve seen and used; rather, a small adapter ferule is used — the same as on certain older Leitz and Nikon cameras — which screws-on around the shutter release button, after which you can screw-in a standard cable release. Those adapters are quite difficult to find these days, unfortunately, but if you can source one, it works nicely with the Yashica-D.
The Experience
Since getting my Yashica-D working, I’ve had the pleasure of reacquainting myself with the various joys (and sometimes challenges) of shooting with a TLR. And to be honest, the Yashica name on the front doesn’t really change anything about the experience as it might be perceived from behind a Rolleiflex or any of the other myriad copycats manufactured over the years.
While it’s true that other types of viewfinders have made their way to TLRs, by and large, the shooting experience with the vast majority of them (including the Yashica-D) begins with opening the lid of the waist-level viewfinder (usually referred to as WLF for short), and peering downward into the camera while facing your subject.
In truth, my use of a WLF in a TLR might begin with opening the lid, but the very next step is deploying the magnifier that most TLRs sport in one way or another. This allows me to bring the camera to my eye, and better see the focusing process to ensure accuracy. With focus nailed, I stow the magnifier, and return the camera to my waist for composition. With the Yashica-D, that magnifier is deployed by pressing the top of the finder (it’s actually in front, facing the subject, when the finder is open). Stowing it involves merely pressing the magnifier back down until it locks in-place.
At some point of course, one does have to meter the scene or estimate exposure, then set the aperture and shutter speed. As mentioned above, that’s done “Rollei style” with dials on the front of the camera, with the scales visible through a clear plastic window visible from the top of the camera. Then, cock the shutter, get things into position, and press the release. Done.
Like most leaf shutter cameras, the Yashica-D is very quiet. I’d say mine is “whisper quiet,” but it’s not even that loud, which makes it difficult to know if your shot was even taken, especially if there’s any ambient noise (at all). But with the assumption made, advancing the film involves pressing a button in the middle of the winding knob to unlock the mechanism, then rotating the knob until it stops. A small window adjacent to the knob shows the exposure number.
There’s nothing in the Yashica-D to keep you from double-exposing your film, so the winding regimen is up to you. Do it after each shot, or do it before, but do it at some point to avoid that issue.
After shooting, the Yashica-D’s WLF closes without any folding of the side panels required; just move the top lid in the right direction, and it collapses automatically.
TLRs vary in terms of which functions are on which side(s), and on the Yashica-D, it’s right-handed design; both the focus knob and the advance knob are on the photographer’s right. This is where the locking function on the advance is helpful; if you blindly go to focus and try to move the film advance instead, it won’t move the film accidentally instead.
Once all 12 of the exposures are completed, the advance knob is turned into the film is fully wrapped around the take-up spool, at which point the back can be opened and the film removed.
Loading film in the Yashica-D is like most TLRs. Move the take-up spool from the last roll to the take-up position, place the new roll, un-seal, pull, insert, wind until it’s taking-up by itself, and then align the double arrow start marking on the backing paper to the red dots on the back of the body. Close the back, and turn the film advance knob until it stops. As I said earlier, it works, it’s accurate, it’s simple and it’s trouble-free.
The Accessories
The Yashica-D owner’s manual doesn’t explicitly mention any accessories for the camera, but a case is depicted, and filters are specifically mentioned toward the end. And for the most part, that should be all you’d need. My particular camera didn’t come with a case, and finding a vintage one in good shape can be challenging; I’ll go without.
With respect to filters, so-called “Series” vintage adapters and drop-in filters from Kodak and others work well with the Yashica-D. You’ll need a No. 54 Series V (Series 5) adapter for the Yashica’s Bay 1 mount, along with Series V drop-ins as desired. Of value today would be Kodak’s Series contrast filters, also known as “Wratten” filters, in yellow and/or red for use with black-and-white film, although there are also UV/Skylight filters. One thing to know: The Kodak Series hoods don’t work with the Yashica-D; their round shape causes vignetting in the corners. If you do need a lens hood for the taking lens, find a genuine Yashica version, as I’ve discovered that a Rollei hood doesn’t have the needed clearances on the Yashica-D.
While that Rollei hood might not work, other Rollei Bay 1 (Bay I) accessories do, including Rollei filters, and the popular Rolleinar close-up aux lenses. Additionally, Yashica did make Bay 1 tele and wide aux lenses along the way, which do work nicely with the Yashica-D (and other Bay 1 TLRs). Those aux lenses come in two pieces each, with an aux lens to fasten over the viewing lens to see the correct field of view, and a larger one for the taking lens to actually get the shot.
My only real complaint with using filters, hoods and aux lenses on the Yashica-D is that the inner bayonet is somewhat loose on the camera. That’s the case as well with my Mat-124G, and another Yashica-D in the house as well. I’m not sure why; perhaps the tolerances weren’t as tight as Rollei, or perhaps it’s age and wear. But I do recommend a bit of care to avoid bumping a filter or aux lens in just the right way, and having it end-up on the ground in front of you.
The Results
Given the inoperative condition in which my Yashica-D found its way to me, I wasn’t optimistic that once my work was complete, that the result would be a camera worth using. Much to my pleasant surprise, my lack of optimism was misplaced. Sure, I had confirmed on my workbench that the viewfinder’s opinion on the rather important matter of focus matched that of the taking lens — as perfectly as I was able to determine, anyway, absent professional-grade collimation tools and jigs intended for this camera. But when the first roll’s shots were reviewed after scanning, I was greeted with superb results.
Because I’d loaded the camera with ISO 400 film, my daylight shots unfortunately required the use of small apertures, which is rarely a set-up where any given lens performs at its best. I’d also used a Kodak Series V lens hood in a couple of shots, which caused vignetting, as well as a Yashica tele aux lens, which when used with small apertures, also vignettes. So, not the most auspicious start in every way, but enough to see that my rescue of a very nasty, very bad, and very affordable Yashica-D had been a great success.
Hopefully you’ll agree.
