Was gifted a Yashica TL-Electro

I quite like mine. It is a solid camera with good metering and no unnecessary bells and whistles. If you like big, heavy fully-manual cameras, you should get along just fine with it. And the meter seems accurate with alkaline batteries, so no worry about finding a zinc-air battery with "proper" voltages, like most Yashica cameras of the same vintage, the meter circuit seems quite forgiving of the higher voltage alkaline or silver cells, as opposed to the original mercury batteries. While not as elegant in fit and finish as the highly regarded Pentax cameras of the same era, you should find it to be a good performer.
 
Have one. Used it without the light meter and worked well enough like any other manual SLR for me so far. Pretty decent camera.

I bought mine for a few euro at a flea market. Light seals had turned to goo. After replacing the film door seals I still had a light leak. There's another bit of foam cushioning the VF lens. This had deteriorated too and allowed light to get between the film and the shutter curtain.
 
I think it has dynamic exposure? That is if during exposure light changes circuit will adjust exposure to match changes. Not all cameras had this feature back then, I think Yashica and Nikon did it right.
 
btgc said:
I think it has dynamic exposure? That is if during exposure light changes circuit will adjust exposure to match changes. Not all cameras had this feature back then, I think Yashica and Nikon did it right.
Click to expand...

No. Indeed nobody had anything like that back then - what you describe was the "auto-dynamic" off-the-film reading Olympus later became famous for. Indeed, Yashica and Nikon were particularly late into similar technologies, and only ever used it for flash.

That invention actually had a unusually complex history. It started out as a CZJ/Pentacon (Praktica) patent, the TTL part of a bigger AE patent suite they developed. They successfully used and licensed many other parts of that suite, but the focal plane shutter variant was never used in any of their own SLRs. They eventually licensed it to Minolta, who in their turn only used it in the CLE (and for TTL flash metering on some SLRs) before licensing it on to Olympus (OM-2) and Pentax (LX). When it expired around 1983, everybody copied the TTL flash part, but no new constant light "auto-dynamic" AE cameras were introduced any more (other than Olympus doing variations on the cameras they already had in 83).
 
sevo said:
No. Indeed nobody had anything like that back then - what you describe was the "auto-dynamic" off-the-film reading Olympus later became famous for. Indeed, Yashica and Nikon were particularly late into similar technologies, and only ever used it for flash.
Click to expand...

Hm. Yashica Electro rangefinders do this, as far as I remember. Will check with scale focus 35MC, too. I don't have any Electro SLR so this were a guess.
 
I picked up one today for £4.99 with the 50 1.7 figuring I'd have a play with it, and I have a bunch of M42 lenses, subsequently I learned that there are not only battery issues, but two types of battery that it may take.

Is it worth the faffing about with, or should I continue with my Pentax SP500 & Fujica bodies?
 
btgc said:
Hm. Yashica Electro rangefinders do this, as far as I remember. Will check with scale focus 35MC, too. I don't have any Electro SLR so this were a guess.
Click to expand...

I don't think so -- the Electro rangefinder meters were not through the lens. But the meter on these cameras was and is legendary for its sensitivity; I think it could meter down to 30 seconds accurately.
 
I opened up the battery compartment and it still had the epx640 mercury batteries in them. What are some alternatives I could use? I read somewhere that hearing aide batteries could work.
 
The battery only powers the meter, it's not required for the shutter.
An external light meter or Sunny F/16 if you can't find any alternative battery set-ups.


The most important light seals are around the edges of the film door. You can inspect those without having to disassemble anything.

If the seal under the VF lens has deteriorated you'll see it like this on your photos:
leak01.jpg

It requires you to take the top of the camera to get to this seal though.
 
And you can get LR52 Alkaline batteries.
I'm not sure if they are the same voltage as the original epx640 and if that would influence the accuracy of the meter.
 
I weren't stating anywhere Electro RF meters TTL as it's not supposed to work this way...as a user I worry only about results - if camera adjusts exposure dynamically and gets proper exposure, then good to me and I don't really care if it is done off the film or not.

Anyway, there are two companies who make cameras and lenses - Yashica and Ricoh. Oh, were!
 
I had one for a while. It was bought cheaply, on a whim, as it was one of the (many) cameras I fancied but couldn't afford as a teenager in the 'sixties.

It turned out not to be my cup of tea, so I sold it...

...at a small profit. 😉
 
btgc said:
I think it has dynamic exposure? That is if during exposure light changes circuit will adjust exposure to match changes. Not all cameras had this feature back then, I think Yashica and Nikon did it right.
Click to expand...
The camera would have to be aperture-priority AE for something like this to work. The TL Electro is fully manual. And it is the TL Electro X that has the electronically controlled shutter (and the "atom" symbol logo), but it is also a fully mechanical manual camera otherwise.
 
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