I’m backlogged as usual, but luckily I made some notes after trying a Yashica-Mat 124 for the first time about two weeks ago. Since I think it might be useful to some of you to hear my first impressions when using an old-school TLR, I’ll provide my thoughts here.
Introduction
TLR stands for Twin Lens Reflex. The twin lens stands for the two lenses involved — the bottom ‘taking’ lens (that actually puts an image on film) and a top ‘viewing’ lens that puts an image on the viewing screen. The reflex portion of the term stands for the fact that a mirror is used to reflect the image from the taking lens to the viewing screen or focusing glass. If you’d like to see the mechanical drawings for the camera, check out Assembling charts for the YashicaMat 124G — it can clarify a lot of these terms. Of course, I have the 124, not the 124G, but the cameras are near identical in construction.
The Yashica-mat 124 is a popular Rolleiflex clone that is reasonably well-respected by used camera enthusiasts yet still relatively inexpensive on the used market (mine was $70, including shipping, although I got a good deal on it). If you’d like to see current prices, check out my CamNotes page on the Yashicamat 124.
Anyway, I’m coming from a background of digital SLRs, so the 124’s waist level viewfinder and all-mechanical operation was definitely something new. This first time I ran a single roll of black and white film (twelve 6×6 frames on a roll of 120) through the camera to test it out and check the quality. The film was Ilford Delta 400 Pro, although I claim to know nothing about film variants at this point.
I’ve already gotten negatives and prints back for this shoot, but that’s another post entirely. This post is just about first impressions.
Using the Yashica-Mat 124
Holding it in my hands, I constantly felt like I was going to drop the thing, but that is mostly because I do not have a camera strap for it. Once I got used to it, it felt pretty good in my hands, and the build quality is quite good, much more solid than my Canon 350D (Rebel XT) and even more solid than my 20D. Of course, pretty much everything on the camera is made out of metal, so that should be no surprise. For reference, I believe the Yashicamat 124 was sold from 1968-1971, so this camera is almost forty years old.
Whoa, I didn’t think about it before, but the camera is older than I am! (and, sadly, in much better shape)
To use the waist level viewfinder, flip up the viewing hood and look at the viewing screen that it protects. This screen provides an image equivalent to the film area (a little over two inches square), so it is pretty large. Brightness is decent, but if you’ve got direct sun on your face or you are aiming into shadow, the viewing screen can be hard to see. You can also flip up a magnifier (by pushing on the area on the face of a hood) which you put your eye to just like a normal viewfinder, but looking down instead of horizontal. The magnifier does provide a much larger view and it can be easier to tweak focus, but I had a harder time focusing my eye through the magnifier and composing. I definitely prefer the normal viewing screen.
And the viewing screen really is one of the neat parts of a TLR. With a bright scene, it really is like there is a small TV in the camera showing you the view. And the image itself is just beautiful (even though the mirror and viewing screen on my TLR are pretty dirty). Strangely enough, the view seems almost 3-D to me — it is hard to describe, but I feel like I’m getting more than just a flat image from a viewfinder. The one gotcha, at least with the Yashica line, is that the image is reflected left to right. This is probably a result of the refractive image reversing through the lens and then the reflection correcting the image vertically but not horizontally. The image reversal definitely interferes with my use of the camera though — I constantly moved the wrong way when composing and the whole process of framing a shot took a lot longer than I’m used to. I’ve heard that you can get used to the reversed image, but I think it will take me longer than most people.
In practice, I found it was best to frame my shot by eye, then bring the camera up, focus, and shoot. The prime lens (75mm, approximately a 45mm equivalent for 35mm cameras) is somewhat restrictive, so moving closer/farther from the subject while using the reversed image was quite difficult for me. The focal length (equivalent to a normal lens) is fine, but the lens suffers from another big problem: the close focus distance is not very close at all. I constantly found myself running out of focusing room as I tried to get details or a single face.
Flare is also a problem with the camera — many sites mention this — so I’ll likely invest in a hood in the future.
Focusing is achieved with a wheel on the left side of the camera that is very smooth and well-damped. I had no problem getting good focus. The shutter release is at the front of the camera under your right finger. The winder falls on the side of the camera near your right hand. I found that operating the camera (in terms of winding and cocking the shutter) was very fast and easy.
The “Mat” in Yashica-Mat stands for automatic shutter cocking — after taking a picture, you flip out the winding lever, wind it approximately one revolution clockwise until it stops, then go counterclockwise a quarter of a turn to cock the shutter. It makes a strange ratchety noise when you wind it that is pretty loud. I’ve heard that the 124G is much quieter to wind, but the 124 has a more robust winding system. FYI, earlier Yashica TLRs use a knob for winding and a separate knob or lever for shutter cocking.
The shutter itself is quite a departure from a DSLR shutter. First of all, there’s no mirror to lift out of the way before firing the shutter — so you can see the image the whole time you release the shutter, and the sound of the shutter is minimal. Usually just a tiny little ‘click’ that is easy to miss. For longer shutter speeds, you can hear the mechanical shutter timer ticking down with a noise like one of those wind-up toys they gave kids in the 50s.
Shutter speed and aperture are adjusted with two small knobs between the two lenses (just to the side of them). There is a readout on the top of the viewing lens that is easy to see when using the waistlevel finder. I had no problems adjusting the exposure controls. Of course, I had to do it manually, so I first shot an image or two with my 20D, then set the Yashica Mat to the same settings and shot a frame or two. This was a very awkward and slow process and I’d really like to get the meter on the Yashica-Mat 124 working at least a little bit. Oddly enough, the meter actually responded sometimes when I was shooting, and showed an exposure very similar to what I got from my 20D.
The Yashica-Mat 124 meter is a match-needle type, meaning you have an orangish ‘hook’ and a ‘needle’ (actually, just a meter indicator) that you try to get to line up. The aperture wheel and film speed setting move the ‘hook’ mechanically, while the combination of shutter speed and light sensor move the needle. The idea is that when you match them up, you have a good exposure.
Of course, the meter in the 124/124g is notoriously unreliable and imprecise, but at least it would be something to keep me from dragging around my 20D every time!
Subjects and Results
My main subjects were my kids, although I took a shot or two of my house to test exposure and different apertures. The kids, of course, were one of my problems — my kids move a lot! Furthermore, 400 speed film is great for shadows, but with direct sun you have to stop down significantly to get a shutter speed the camera can actually do. Luckily, my kids were good sports, because I spent way more time struggling to frame the image and mucking with the settings and focus than I spent taking pictures. Ultimately, a camera is only as good as the images it lets you take, and this TLR, at least for the first time, got in the way more than it helped me.
With practice, I think I can do better, but ultimately this is not an action camera. Which is probably why editorial shooters shifted from TLRs to SLRs in the 60s. But, the larger negative can definitely help out with landscapes or detailed portraits for a much lower price than a large format camera or a 20MP+ digital camera. I’d like to experiment more with my 124, but ultimately, it will not be a camera I grab when there’s any action involved.
Anyway, I hope this information helps you, especially if you are considering an old TLR like my Yashica-Mat. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!
And, expect a post in the next few days about the results of this first shoot!