Yashica’s Y35 Camera is Worse Than Anyone Expected

Kickstarter may have started with a more noble purpose, to give artists and small developers of ideas and products a funding source. Ideas for products that traditional investment money was unavailable. So, let the ‘crowd’ decide, thus the term “crowdfunding”.
Unfortunately the ‘crowd’ are just not equipped to evaluate viability or honesty of potential creators of these projects. Often there is simply not sufficient information obtainable to make an informed decision.
So.....you go with your gut. Your gut and your desire for the item, whatever that is.
I’ve come to realize that most photographic hardware related campaigns are woefully underfunded and/or estimated timelines to completion wishful thinking.
I really don’t think most creators start out with bad intentions. But when their projects go south, and their only response to backers is to clam up and go dark. Then you can understand the anger backers feel.
I have noticed that campaigns that are too successful, with thousands of backers, seem to have rather more problem delivering on promises.
Kickstarter does not do a good job of apprising potential backers of the risks. Obviously they don’t wish to ‘bite the hand that feeds them’ and a casual reading of their terms of service could lead backers to think they are protected in some way from total loss of the funds they sent to the campaign.
I would like to see a third party compile a list of projects platformed on Kickstarter and make a spreadsheet showing how they turned out. When the precentages of successful vs problematic outcomes are compared I wonder if it would have an impact on their business.
 
I'm not sure this is a scam because they did deliver the product after all. But it's definitely a mismatch of quality marketing in support of an incompetently designed, badly manufactured product. It's a shame the Yashica name was used for this albatross. What a mess.
 
IMO, the facts were right there on the campaign page, but easily outshone by prettier videos and "reference images" not actually taken with the camera.
 
$125 clams??? You pay your money and you take your chance.
If the sponsors of this project are planning on having a warehouse fire, I'd take one off their hands for shipping costs.
It might be fun to play with or smash into a gazillion bits, or whatever. :rolleyes:
 
Completely expected this outcome. It had all the signs of a low-quality product from the beginning. No official specs, no lens diagrams, no materials list. Of course, it was going to be plastic junk. A fool and their money are soon parted.
 
I wonder how many of photography related start-ups that rely on crowd sourced funding turn out well.

What I find troubling with these jokers is they have essentially waste binned the Yashica brand for a quick buck.

The group responsible for the Y-35 fiasco shouldn't be confused with those that have made a honest effort to develop a useful niche product that may or may not succeed.

New55 film and the Lab-Box come to mind.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2017788873/lab-box-the-first-multi-format-daylight-loading-fi/updates
 
Solinar said:
New55 film and the Lab-Box come to mind.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...irst-multi-format-daylight-loading-fi/updates
Click to expand...

Oh, I almost forgot about this one. Seems they are one year late to deliver already?

When the KS of this project was early-on some of my friends who wanted to try film photography for the first time got hooked by it. I watched the KS video and found that it was full of misinformation anyone who has developed a roll of film would notice. It made me feel that they were trying to to target on people who hadn't done film developing, which is self-contradictory. I persuaded my friends not to back it, I hope I did right.
 
At the very least they should have put a JCII Passed gold sticker on the body.


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my vc-level is in the $20-25 range! "in my fancy"

yes, the campaign was impressive, maybe not packed with details, but seemed like more than enough info to invest at my level, if they had it... "in my fancy"

jvo

p.s. what does that mean? "in my fancy"?
 
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