Yashica Samurai X3.0
I was graciously given the Yashica Samurai by a friend who recognized that it would interest me, and it does. It’s a half frame camera producing 50 negatives from a standard 24 exposure roll of film. That itself is interesting, it makes you feel less encumbered by the preciousness of the film. It feels almost like shooting digitally you have so many exposures available. Then there is the form of the camera, which is somewhere between an old video camera and a…..I got nothing it’s between an old video camera and nothing. It is an actually SLR with a mirror and a direct view through the lens but rather than the film travelling horizontally the film travels vertically like it would in a movie camera. This provides the opportunity to create vertical stitches of images on the film which I will cover in a later post. The lens is a 25 to 75mm zoom which because of the half frame nature of the camera translates into a 35mm equivalent of 35 to 105mm. Despite being an SLR the camera doesn’t allow manual control or overide of the exposure so it’ functions more like any other point and shoot film camera that looks like a video camera from 1993.
