Wallace Koopmans Artlog

What can I say about the Yashica T4 super that hasn’t already been said somewhere?  I would like to say that the certain fashion photographer that it is often associated with should be relegated to the dustbin of history and the camera restored to its rightful cult status based on its great Carl Zeiss lens.  If you don’t know who I am speaking about do yourself a favor and don’t bother searching it (hint he’s accused of a multitude of sexual assaults).  But the camera its great and was the last of the Yashica T* series.  The first two the T* and the T2 are forgettable cameras while the Yashica T3 is a great camera that provides a particular look (vignetting) from its 35mm f2.8 lens.

I should mention that the film I used was expired Portra 100T (The T is for Tungsten) so you may be wondering why everything isn’t all blueish.  Well during the scanning I must have corrected it out.  It was far more subtle than I expected and I don’t really mind.  It’s one of the perks of a film/digital workflow you can make a multitude of adjustments for whatever look you want.

One thing about one camera: The “Super Scope” on the top of the T4  is a good way to take pictures over the top of obstacles although composing with the camera held over your head with a reversed image takes some getting use to. 

More about the Fuji DL Mini (Tiara) can be found in these links Verticals, Sardine Tin, Super Mini, Super Mini, Super Mini I’m starting to think that maybe I like this camera. It finds its way into a bag on almost every trip I take.

The primary reason is the fantastic 28mm f3.5 4 element lens and the controllability of the camera.  For instance if you press the focus mode button to snap and then hold it in until snap stops flashing the camera is then set for snap focus from 1.3 to 3 meters and doesn’t reset after each frame.  You can also set the camera to manual focus and then select a distance, how many point and shoots allow that?  The shutter has a nice fast 1/800 sec. top speed and an adequate 1/2 sec slow speed.   It has backlight compensation of +2EV and my favorite feature is its pocketability, its not as slim as the Olympus Stylus Epic but for cameras with 28mm lenses its one of the best.

The gallery of images were taken on a trip through Eastern Washington State using Agfa Vista 200 film.

Dubious camera with dubious film = random results.  When I reflect on it I’m constantly in a #shittycamerachallenge with myself.  Of course I want to get something back or what is the point of taking a picture but I accept that by using cameras of suspect quality and film of unknown history I’m likely to get something unexpected.  In this case its a weird pee colour cast and some strange stripes that bare some correlation to the sprocket holes but I’m not quite sure how or why.  This camera is so coveted that now I cant seem to locate it in order to take its portrait for the blog post so in stead here is my incredibly accurate representation of it.