Restored: Yashica Electro 35 (Restoration & Review)

In today’s episode, we restore and review a Yashica Electro 35 GS. This beautifully designed, compact Japanese rangefinder from the 1970s is particularly well-suited for traveling and street photography. It comes with an excellent and fast six-element 40mm f/1.7 lens, a built-in lightmeter with automatic exposure mode. The Yashica Electro 35 series was a true bestseller with over 5 million units produced across all models.
Jules and I always loved the design of the camera and recently took the plunge to finally buy one. Yet, we didn’t buy one in great condition but one that obviously needs repair and love. As Jules is an avid repairer of cameras and lenses for a while and the Leica IIIa repair video was well-received, we were inspired to do more in this direction. Personally, I wanted to learn from him how to do a CLA properly and thought some viewers might be interested as well. I had collected some experience with the cleaning part before but wanted to develop basic CLA skills, such as how to clean, lubricate and adjust a camera to make it work properly again. So in today’s episode we start out with how to clean a camera properly and how to replace the light seals. We are focusing on sharing basic tips, tools and materials. There are obviously channels and blogs focused exclusively on this topic. Yet, I thought if you see somebody like me doing it, you might be encouraged to give it a try yourself.

Why this new format? We believe it is important to discuss the repair and restoration of old cameras here on the channel as well. The continuous availability of film cameras is dependent on the skill to repair and restore them properly.

In the face of current market demands, it is also economically much more efficient to restore existing cameras instead of hoping that manufacturers would bring back certain models or depending on the few which are still available “new” today. The Finnish Camera Rescue project which restored 100,000 cameras since 2010 shows how it can be done.

So here'sur first episode of “Restored”.

Gear used:
Yashica Electro 35 GS
Yashica lens shade
Oberwerth Mosel vintage strap

(Please note: You can get 10% off your purchase by entering the code ANALOGINSIGHTS during checkout on Oberwerth.com)

Films used:
Kodak Gold 200
Ilford HP5

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#yashica #yashicaelectro35 #restoration #filmphotography #analogphotography

Видео Restored: Yashica Electro 35 (Restoration & Review) канала Analog Insights