Yashica MC

YashicaMC-6373

I always liked how the Yashica GX was a downsized version of the Yashica GT and original Electro 35 but the Yashica MC takes it a step further packing it all into a diminutive package.  The only trade offs seem to be that the lens has a maximum aperture of 2.8 rather than 1.7 and it is zone focusing rather than a rangefinder but it ups the cute by a factor of 10.  As for the zone focusing it does have a needle in the viewfinder that points to different icons to represent distance.  If you wanted to you could memorize what different locations represented such as if the needle points at the nose it’s 4 feet or the base of the mountain is 20 feet while the top is infinity.  The exposure system appears to be derived directly from its larger siblings with its aperture control and infinitely variable electronic shutter from 4seconds to 1/500 seconds.  The lens on the MC is a 40mm f2.8 comprised of 4 elements in 4 groups and as far as I can tell is pretty good.

YashicaMC-8594

 

One thing about one camera:  Without batteries you can still take pictures with the Yashica MC but the shutter operates at 1/500 sec.