Yashica Electro 35 Score From Salvation Army
Like most fridays, my friends and I got together to go out to eat, but this time we took a detour to our local Salvation Army. My friend was hoping to find a cheap halloween costume while I was curious as to what cameras they had in stock, if any. After seeing some really depressing point and shoots, my friend pointed to a possibly interesting find behind the counter. So after asking to see the camera, it turns out that it was an old Yashica Electro 35 GSN. These cameras were very popular in the 60s when they were first introduced. In fact, you probably have a relative who owns one of these somewhere locked away in storage collecting dust. The name electro actually refers to the electromagnets that operate the electronic shutter. That's right, its an aperture priority camera. Actually it was the first of its kind to introduce this. Unfortunately there isn't any way to manually choose the shutter other than 'bulb' mode which works just how it sounds and the 'flash' mode which limits the shutter to 1/30th of a second.
The Yashica they had, which I obviously ended up buying, is in really great shape for its age. There's no mold or dust on the lens or in the viewfinder and the only cosmetic blemishes are the 'GSN' tag that fell off, or was removed, and a nick near the viewfinder. All of the mechanical things work as well, like the shutter release and winders, though I'm not entirely sure just yet if the metering works or not. Since it's so old, the camera originally ran on a mercury battery, which, for obvious reasons, are no longer in production. You can find alkaline replacements that work just as well with a little adjustments. I actually think someone was going through their relative's old things and found this camera, noticed that there was no battery in it, or that the battery was dead, and decided that it doesn't work, so they put it in a box to donate to the Salvation Army. I don't know if that's what really happened or not, but it's a highly probably stab in the dark. There was also some film still loaded in the back that I'd like to get developed. Who knows, maybe someone's famous grandpa once own this. (HA) Anyone else out there have any experience with this camera or similar ones? I'd love to know any little quirks about shooting with it that you've learned along the way. Let me know down below!
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