Yashica 44 35mm conversion rev. 0.9
I picked up this Yashica 44 as is at the Vancouver camera show. The problem with it was that the front of the camera just flopped around. Repairing it turned out to be very easy, it was missing some screws inside and by missing I mean gone, not a trace.
It turns out though that there are some screws that were an exact match inside a broken Pentax Spotmatic that I had. After putting it all back together it was time to break it. Well modify it anyway.
What I did was remove the upper roller and film holder so that I could squeeze a 35mm film canister in there. This is the point where the rev 0.9 comes in. I tested the camera and found a couple of things that didn’t quite work out. The first and most obvious one was that I miscalculated how much to advance the film for each frame. Half a turn is enough near the end of the roll but not at the beginning. The other issue is that the pressure plate that holds the film flat is very reflective. That isn’t a problem for film with a paper backing like this camera originally used but is with transparent film. I think that the light was reflected back through the film which reduced the sharpness and contrast. So to rectify that I will paint it black, I will also replace the dried up faux leather that graced the front of the camera before.
The scanning itself was a problem as the holder that I have obscures the sprocket holes. I placed the film on the Epson V700 glass directly but this is not an ideal situation and results in newton rings and discolouration around the edges. I think I will build a more general purpose film holder that can be adjusted for holding 35mm film from either end at the proper distance from the scanner.