YASHICA ELECTRO 35 CCN Review

 

 

Years ago, I was given a Yashica Electro 35 CCN film camera by a friend, but I never used it because it had no light seals left. They had basically disintegrated over time, and as much as the camera seemed interesting to me, I decided not to use it and stored it in my dry boxes and forgot about it. I mostly used my Nikon F2 to shoot film, and after some disappointing rolls of film with the Canonet QL17, I decided that I did not like using rangefinders and kinda forgot about the camera. Every few months, I would check Google Analytics and find that a ton of people kept looking at the one early blog post I made about getting this camera. So I decided to take the camera out for a test and see why so many people kept coming to look at it.

 

 

The camera feels heavy and well-made; it does not feel light and empty like so many of my digital cameras. The top and bottom plates are made from metal, giving the camera a substantial, real tool-like feel. The top plate is really simple, featuring a cold shoe for flash, a lockable shutter button, a film rewind lever, and a plastic film advance lever.

 

 

 

 

The bottom plate is as basic as you can get. It has a tripod thread and a button to allow you to rewind the film. It’s nice and well-made with very little that could go wrong.

 

 

The camera takes the 28A battery, and I have a lot of them stored in my apartment. I mostly use them in my Pentax 67. The battery goes into the top metal plate, and there is a battery check button next to it. If you press the battery check button, there is a light next to the film number window. I tended to check this a lot, as there is no display to tell if the battery is working in the viewfinder, except for an indication of under or overexposure. So you could easily shoot some shots with this camera and think that there is no problem with the exposure, only to find out later that the battery was dead.

 

 

The back of the camera is really basic, and when you open it up, it is also nice and simple. You have the film holder, the film uptake spool, and light seals. A simple design is good as there are fewer things that can go wrong. Unfortunately, the light seals on my unit are completely gone, so I had to tape up my camera to make sure I did not have any light leaks.

 

 

 

 

 

My biggest problem with wanting to shoot the camera was the light seals. Replacing light seals is not my kinda thing and there aren’t any local camera shops that could do the job for me in China. So I did the next best thing and taped the camera up. Something I learned from shooting my Holga.

 

 

 

Now let’s look at the real meat of the camera, the lovely 35mm f/1.8 lens. The lens is made out of metal and feels nice and solid, but the focus ring is plastic. It feels strong, and I did not even notice that it was plastic at first, but I wish it was made out of metal. The front of the lens has the light meter, and it seems to work well, but more on the metering later. The lens has a 52mm filter thread, which could be handy if you are using ND or color filters. The lens also includes your ISO or ASA selector and your self-timer lever. That is a lot of controls on a single lens, but they seem to work. I am not crazy about the ISO selector, though; it is something that I would use or change a lot, and it feels a little awkward to change the setting.

 

 

 

The first thing you should know about this camera is that it is a semi-automatic camera. You set the ISO and aperture on the camera, and the camera will meter the scene and set the correct shutter speed. This can be scary with a new camera when you have no idea if the camera meter works correctly, but luckily for me, it worked really well. The camera does not set shutter speeds like a traditional SLR camera as it has a stepless electronic leaf shutter. So instead of using traditional shutter speeds such as 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, the camera can set any shutter speed to meter the scene correctly. So you could easily have a shutter speed of 1/75 or 1/236. Unfortunately, the camera does not display the shutter speed except for some colored arrows, so you really have to trust the camera’s meter system.

 

 

The metering system’s colored arrows work like this: When composing your shot, pressing the shutter button halfway will activate the metering system. If the arrow pointing left lights up, it indicates that your aperture is too small, and you should open the lens up to let in more light. The camera doesn’t like to shoot at a slower shutter speed of 1/30, so if you need more light, you have to open the lens up or shoot with a faster film. If the arrow pointing right lights up, then you are overexposed, so you need to stop down the lens. Fairly easy to understand and use, if you are a photographer.

The fastest shutter speed of the camera is 1/250, so it is not exactly quick. If you are shooting with a fast film, you might need to use ND filters to cut down the amount of light. The last catch with the shutter system is the battery. If your battery is dead, you can still take photos and meter the scene with an off-camera meter or using the Sunny 16 rule, but the shutter speed will be stuck at 1/250. This could easily cause problems if you don’t know that the battery has died because there is no indication that a photo is exposed correctly. You could shoot a whole roll of film thinking that it is all exposed correctly, only to find out later that nothing is exposed correctly.

 

The lens is an interesting one; it is a 35mm f/1.8 lens made up of 6 elements in 4 groups. From the shots that I have taken with the lens, it seems sharp, even wide open at f/1.8. There is little to no vignetting that I can see, and even the corners of an image look good when shot wide open. I have only shot black and white film with the camera, so I cannot really tell if there are any chromatic aberrations, but from what I have seen so far, it is really good.

 

 

 

This is the second rangefinder camera that I have used, and I will say that the viewfinder and focus patch are so much better than the Canonet QL17, which I had used previously. I found the Canonet extremely hard to focus at times, as the focus patch was difficult to see in many lighting situations, and it completely put me off rangefinder cameras. However, the Yashica Electro 35 CCN is completely different. The viewfinder is nice and bright, the rangefinder patch is easy to see, and the lens focuses with the rangefinder patch really easily. I had no difficulties focusing the camera this time and actually found it easier to focus than my Nikon F2. It was simply a joy to focus and shoot with this camera, and it completely changed my opinion of rangefinder cameras.

The frame lines in the finder are nice and bright, and they shift when you are focusing on nearby objects, allowing you to adjust for any parallax errors. This can be extremely useful for someone who shoots a lot with SLRs and tends to forget about parallax corrections. I made this mistake many times with my Yashica Mat 124G, so I really appreciate the frame lines doing this automatically for me when I am trying to focus on something nearby.

 

 

The one thing that I did not like on this camera, and I am not sure if it is just my unit, is the shutter button. It is really spongy. A half-press to get your exposure reading is a really long press, and the full click on the shutter button means you have to push the button all the way down. I have never had a camera with a shutter button that needed so much travel to actually fire. It is not that I have to use a lot of force to fire the shutter, it is just that the actual shutter button must travel a lot to actuate.

 

 

I shot a few images into the sun, and like most film shots, you tend to lose some contrast and the lens can flare a little. I don’t have a lens hood for this camera—if I did, maybe that would help—but the flaring is not terrible, and I would shoot into the sun again with it.

 

 

 

 

One important aspect of a camera that I think most people ignore is how it feels to use. Some cameras work great but are simply terrible to use. I would put a lot of Sony digital cameras into this category, or even my Olympus Mju II film camera. Technically, they are not bad cameras, but they are not fun to use. The Yashica Electro 35 CCN is thankfully very different. It feels great in the hand; it is not too heavy, focusing is simple, and loading film into it is a breeze. I really enjoyed my time with the camera and will shoot with it again. I wish I did not have to tape the camera up every time I wanted to use it, but replacing the light seals in China is just not possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion:

 

For once, the conclusion is easy to write. The camera is fun to use, it takes great photos, and it is easy to focus. Loading film into the camera is easy, and the auto functions in the camera work well. The metering is really good—maybe better than my Nikon F2—and because it has a leaf shutter, you can shoot the camera at some slow shutter speeds and still get sharp images. The only negative thing I can say about this camera is that the ISO can only go up to 500, so you cannot shoot fast speeds, and you really cannot push film with this camera. I love pushing 400 film to 1600, but it is not really possible with this camera. The maximum shutter speed of 1/250 is also not great, and you will need to use ND filters if you want to shoot this lens wide open in good light. But if you are looking for a small film camera to take with you, a point-and-shoot with a good lens, then this is the camera I would recommend above all other small cameras that I have tried. I would pick this over the Canonet QL19 or the Olympus Mju II, and it is considerably more affordable than both those cameras.

 

Pros

• Small, light, and compact
• Excellent light meter
• Good construction quality
• the lens is nice and sharp

Cons

• Almost fully automatic so you have very little control
• limited ASA or ISO range
• plastic film advanced lever
• Not enough exposure information in the viewfinder.