Yashica Electro 35 CC Production Run

[Dave S.]

I noticed that cameraquest.com indicates the Yashica Electro 35 CC was "Produced from about 1970 to 1975, they are not common today."

My camera is stamped "June 8 1977" on the inside of the camera on the film canister side. Anyone know what the production run of the Yashica Electro 35 CC was? Sounds like I may have a pretty late copy.

 

[kuzano]

Contact seller fotofila on eBay

Contact seller fotofila on eBay

Over the years he has sold a "bunch" of the CC and CCN, both user and near mint. I am amazed at how many of these he lists, considering the "hard to find" comments.

He seems to be quite a purveyor of rangefinder, Fuji, and Yashica cameras.

I suspect he may know the answer to your question.

Number???? I'd say I've seen him list 20-25

Seller..... fotofila

 

[Frontman]

I noticed that cameraquest.com indicates the Yashica Electro 35 CC was "Produced from about 1970 to 1975, they are not common today."

My camera is stamped "June 8 1977" on the inside of the camera on the film canister side. Anyone know what the production run of the Yashica Electro 35 CC was? Sounds like I may have a pretty late copy.

They key word to camera quest's description is "from about". I have a dozen or CC and CCN cameras in my closet (I also sell many of these on eBay), I'll take a look at the range of dates when I get back home.

 

[Bill58]

Over the years he has sold a "bunch" of the CC and CCN, both user and near mint. I am amazed at how many of these he lists, considering the "hard to find" comments.

He seems to be quite a purveyor of rangefinder, Fuji, and Yashica cameras.

I suspect he may know the answer to your question.

Number???? I'd say I've seen him list 20-25

Seller..... fotofila

I think they are not as common as some of their counterparts from Oly, Canon, etc but they are not "rare" either. Maybe the head bartender here is taking some literary license, AKA marketing BS. One thing is for sure--they are really fine cameras.

 

[Dave S.]

Response from www.yashica-guy.com

Response from www.yashica-guy.com

I emailed Joe Wolff (aka yashica-guy) and he said he did not know how long any of the Yashica lines ran. He also said that Yashica never marked a date on any of their "metal classics" so the date printed on mine was possibly put there by a repair service.

He went on to say that this made sense to him because by mid 1977 the Yashica CC was obsolete because, "the flash was dedicated to one time use flashbulbs and no camera store would stock it."

I'm curious about that last part because my manual clearly provides instructions (and pictures) for using an electronic flash.

Maybe he meant how the flash sync is 1/30 only?

 

[sevo]

He went on to say that this made sense to him because by mid 1977 the Yashica CC was obsolete because, "the flash was dedicated to one time use flashbulbs and no camera store would stock it."

I'm curious about that last part because my manual clearly provides instructions (and pictures) for using an electronic flash.

As per the manual, Yashica offered both a bulb and a electronic flash for the 35 CC - the 1/30 doubtlessly was a requirement for the former. But while the mid seventies were the time when compacts went over to electronic computer flash, they still weren't designed for fill flash (that did not happen until compacts with internal flash appeared). The deficit of a 1/30s flash time is rather subtle and hardly the reason the CCN was stopped - at that time, 1/60s still was state of the art on consumer SLRs. If any, the cold shoe killed it - that was far a more visibly outdated feature.

And of course the general market trend of the seventies pushed automatic SLRs into the market segment previously held by high end compact rangefinders - Yashica, who were growing a second high end SLR series in the Contax were even competing with their own SLR product lines.