I walked into my dad’s office one day a few years ago and this beauty was sitting on his desk. I became immediately excited, picked it up, asked him if I could have it, and scampered away with it when he said yes. I don’t really know why he had it, or where it came from. I think at the time I thought if I asked him about it, he’d not let me keep it. So I took it back to college with me, and it became the second addition to my vintage camera collection.

This Yashica is the workhorse of my medium format cameras. It’s a twin-lens reflex (TLR), meaning it has two objective lenses, both of the same focal length. The bottom lens allows light to hit the film, and is the one controlled by the shutter. The top lens bounces a mirror image to the screen at the top. To compose the image, you open the hood and peer down from above, holding the camera around waist-level. The knob on the left side focuses the picture by moving the plate containing the lenses away from the camera. A small 3x magnification lens pops out from the hood, to let you get a crisp focus. The aperture and shutter speed are adjusted using the tiny knobs on the front face of the camera, flanking the twin lenses. An exposure meter allows you to choose the best combination of the two, given the current lighting conditions, and is powered by a small coin battery (the only battery-powered component of the camera). The crank handle advances the film if rotated clockwise by 12h, and charges the shutter if rotated counter-clockwise by 6h. Below are a couple of rolls of film I’ve shot using the Yashica Mat-124G.

Manufacturer: Yashica

Model: Mat-124 G

Type: TLR (twin-lens reflex)

Dates of Production: 1970 – 1986

Place of Production: Japan

Lens: Yashinon, 80mm, F3.5-32

Focal Range: 3.5′ to infinity

Shutter: Copal SV

Shutter Speeds: B, 1 – 1/500 sec

Film: 120 & 220

Exposure Meter: CdS

Battery Type: 1.3V mercury

Other Features: Focusing hood with sportsfinder, automatic frame counter, self-timer, crank advance

Roll 1: 

120 B&W Kodak 400TX Film

12/23/09: South Cemetery, Boxborough, MA

01/21/10: Brown University, Providence, RI

 

 

 

Roll 2: 

120 B&W Kodak 400TX Film

Winter & Spring 2011, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA