Yashica GX

[wintoid]

Most non-Yashica fixed lens rangefinders seem to be shutter priority, and I'm very much a fan of aperture priority. For this reason, I hated the Canon GIII QL17 I owned briefly, tolerate the Olympus 35RC, and always end up using my Olympus 35SP in manual mode. Because I've had such a great time with the 35SP, I decided it was time to really try to find a good aperture priority camera, and picked up a Yashica GX. I've been watching GTNs and GSNs and the prices have been fairly unreasonable on eBay, at least here in the UK. After watching a GTN go for £80 recently, I decided it was worth the extra push for the GX.

It arrived here at work today, and my first impressions are.... what a strange camera. I've taken it out over lunch to shoot through a roll. I love being able to lock the shutter, but find that the mechanism of the shutter button has me sometimes shaking the camera just as the shutter trips. I need to unlearn that I guess. The viewfinder seems fantastic, possibly even better than the 35SP. It seems very easy to confuse the aperture ring and the focusing ring. The size is lovely; not too big and not too small.

One question though, is it supposed to clunk when you wind it on?

 

[Bill58]

Wintoid:

My GX is my best fixed lens compact....and yes, mine make a "clunk" when you begin the rewind stroke. It must be resetting the shutter release button (?).

Happy shooting,

Bill

 

[Pherdinand]

no clunk = dead Yashica.
(There are some exceptions from this, though, like the 35CC version.)

Maybe you should get a soft release button(one you can screw into the cable relase hole), if you find you have problems with the original one.

 

[wintoid]

Bill - gosh you have tried enough cameras for that to be high praise. Thanks for the info about the clunk.

Pherdinand - Interesting idea about the soft release. I've never had one before. Are these commonly available devices? I'm in the UK.

 

[Pherdinand]

you can check at the cameraquest website, wintoid. SOmetimes you find them on e-bay too, i guess.
Should not matter where to ship - it fits in a small envelope.

 

[Bill58]

Bill - gosh you have tried enough cameras for that to be high praise. Thanks for the info about the clunk.

Pherdinand - Interesting idea about the soft release. I've never had one before. Are these commonly available devices? I'm in the UK.

The TA (Tom Abramsson) soft release doesn't work on mine--the threads are the wrong size. 'Sorry to say this is for all Yashica RFs I own. I've asked TA if he can produce an unthreaded one and he says "no".

 

[wintoid]

Well from the first roll, none were spoiled by camera shake, so perhaps the shake is happening after the shutter trips 😀

 

[wintoid]

2 further questions about the GX...

1) Who's a good person to do a CLA in the UK?
2) If I wanted it recalibrated to underexpose a stop so that ISO800 was actually ISO1600, is that possible?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[wintoid]

Thanks Whisper, oh yuck!

 

[wintoid]

Despite all the rave reviews, it seems the GX is not a camera I am going to love. There's much to like about it, but at the end of the day the lens seems to do something weird. Objects in the distance are rendered extremely faintly. Have a look at this shot, taken on a clear day...



I suppose some people might love this, but it's not for me. Back to my Olympus 35SP I think.

 

[Pherdinand]

wintoid,

that seems like an extremely high contrast situaion. I'm not sure what lens would handle it good enough.
But i never had a gx, so cannot tell anything🙂
The lens on the gsn however, is extremely good for my taste.

 

[NickTrop]

I've never heard of "objects in the background being rendered faintly" as being an optical quality specific to any particular lens - ever. I'm an amateur, so by all means if this is something to look for when considering lenses, I'm all ears.

If I heard someone say this, my first question would be, "Are you using a UV/Haze filter?" Lack of one - even when conditions appear bright, is the only thing I'm aware of that would cause this to occur.

If you're thinking of selling shoot DragonX a PM. She seems to be very eager for a good sample of a GX.

 

[wintoid]

Hmm Nick thanks that's helpful. I'm not yet sure what I'll do, whether to sell or not. I note that the camera came with a UV filter fitted. Perhaps I should try removing it, just to see whether it's part of the problem.

 

[wintoid]

I don't know how much of a premium the black one commands, but I just watched item 270106546177 finish for $590. I paid $200 for my chrome one, which seemed very steep at the time.

I ran a roll through without the filter on, and the pictures were very nice. It's not conclusive yet, but I remain optimistic.

 

[Bill58]

I don't know how much of a premium the black one commands, but I just watched item 270106546177 finish for $590. I paid $200 for my chrome one, which seemed very steep at the time.

I ran a roll through without the filter on, and the pictures were very nice. It's not conclusive yet, but I remain optimistic.

Geez--I'd let mine for the paltry sum of $500. Any takers?

 

[nasmformyzombie]

I don't know how much of a premium the black one commands, but I just watched item 270106546177 finish for $590. I paid $200 for my chrome one, which seemed very steep at the time.

This is a really crazy price. I've been watching GX's on eBay for about two to three months. The same seller in the Netherlands has had several black GX's over this time. The auction you refer to ended at 4:20 AM Pacific time. I placed a bid for $276 before going to bed last night at 11:00 PM. I thought for sure the camera would be mine---the highest sale price previous to this was in the low $200's (with previous auctions I was unwilling to go higher than $175). If you look at the bid details there were two guys bidding against each other, 23 bids during the last minutes of the auction. I think their emotions got the best of them, it will be interesting to see if the buyer backs out when he realizes he paid more than double what the camera typically sells for.

 

[NickTrop]

Wow. Strike the GX off the list.

 

[wintoid]

On the bright side, things are starting to look a bit better now that I've taken the filter off. Contrast on distant objects doesn't seem to be such a problem. In fact, the lens seems to be more contrasty than I had realised, which is a relief.

 

[NickTrop]

Beautiful shot, wintoid, regardless of camera. Lovely, perfect. That's one for the enlarger.

 

[wintoid]

Thanks Nick, I was pretty pleased with it. The framing is partly down to the parallax-corrected brightlines of the GX.

P.S. I'm a modern man, so I scan my negatives, and throw them in the bin!