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| Yashica 230AF |
There are no
manual controls apart from focus. Shutter speed, aperture and film speed can
all be set manually but only through the automatic systems. This is much slower
and less intuitive than having a shutter speed dial and aperture ring. There
are no dials, knobs or rings on this camera. All adjustments are made with a
combination of buttons and sliders.
Really, this was
the main design flaw here. Where the Canon EOS range introduced the general-purpose
dial just behind the shutter release button (which has subsequently been
adopted by all DSLR manufacturers), this camera has a slider. To make an
adjustment, you repeatedly slide and release – either to the left (to reduce a
value) or to the right (to increase a value). Frequently, this requires the
left hand to simultaneously press a button which is not as fluid a motion as
Canon’s system (I am going to reference the Canon EOS system quite a bit).
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| Lens mount showing 'screwdriver on lower right |
Focus is
achieved by a motor just inside the lens mount – this engages with the lens by
a small ‘screwdriver’ much as Nikon still use on some DSLR bodies. This ‘screwdriver’
retracts when the focus is set to manual.
Time for a
description:
The right-hand
end of the top plate is dominated by a LCD display. This contains all the
relevant information – not all of which is displayed all the tie. At the front
of this display is the exposure mode: Program, Av, Tv or M. In the middle is
the frame counter, shutter speed and aperture. Behind this is the drive mode (single, continuous or
delayed) and focus mode (AF,
CAF or M)
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| Main LCD |
In front of this
LCD is the mode selector slider. This is not marked as to its purpose making
the manual very useful. In front of the selector slider is the shutter release button.
This is a soft rubber. Beside this is a small grey button marked ‘P’ – this small
grey button will set the exposure mode to program and turn on the beeper. This
is very slightly easier than using the ‘mode’ button and selector slider.
Behind the LCD on the back of the top plate is a threaded socket for a standard
cable release. This fires the shutter as you release the cable release plunger
rather than as you press it.
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| Cable release socket |
In the centre of
the top plate is the pentaprism hump. The top of this has a groove on either
side to locate the dedicated flash unit – more later. On the front of the
pentaprism hump there is a translucent window to provide light for the
viewfinder LCD display. When the dedicated flash unit is in place, this window
is covered and the LCD is illuminated by three small lights.
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| Hot shoe with grooves for fitting flash unit |
On top of the
pentaprism hump is the accessory shoe. This is a hot shoe – it has the standard
central contact and so should work with any hot-shoe flash gun. In addition,
there are five more contacts used specifically by the dedicated Yashica flash
unit.
On the left of
the pentaprism hump are the remainder of the controls. Right up to the
pentaprism is the on/off slider. This moves all the way forward to switch the
camera on and half-way for the AE-L setting – more later. The other controls are
buttons, these are used in conjunction with the selector slider on the right of
the top plate. They are: mode, AF, drive, +/- (exposure compensation), ISO and
beeper. The ISO button is an override for the DX system that reads film speed
off the cassette and sets it automatically. This is useful if you want to set
your own EV for the film instead of rating the film at the manufacturer’s
rating. Also if you are using bulk film loaded into black cassettes.
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| main control buttons |
Just in front of
these buttons, on the side of the lens mount, is an unmarked button. This is
used in Manual mode to help set the aperture. In manual, the selector slider
sets the shutter speed, and in conjunction with this button, sets the aperture.
This is quite a clumsy arrangement, to say the least.
Continuing down
the side of the lens mount, there is a large button with a red dot. This is the
lens release button – when this is depressed, the lens can be rotated anti-clockwise
45 degrees and then removed. Below this is the auto/manual focus selector.
Twisting this slightly anti-clockwise retracts the focus ‘screwdriver’ and
allows the lens to be focussed manually.
The only item on
the front of the camera is the lens mount. This is a three blade bayonet mount –
pretty much standard from the 1930s to the present day – with the auto-focus ‘screwdriver’
on the lower right. In 1975, Yashica had joined forces with Zeiss to produce a
series of Contax cameras with a new bayonet mount called the C/Y mount (not to
be confused with Zeiss Ikon’s 1936 Contax cameras with a totally different
bayonet mount). With this camera, Yashica decided to produce a new mount which
is not compatible with the Contax mount and is only used on this camera.
Just inside the
mount at the bottom is a lever which sets the required aperture on the lens.
There is no aperture setting ring on the lenses for this camera – as is now
usual for nerly all new cameras. At the top of the lens mount are five
electrical contacts. As there are no electrically active components in the
lens, I assume these contacts allow the camera’s processor to read zoom and
focus positions.
Also worth
noting is the fact that the focus screen is replaceable. There is a small catch
at the front of the focus screen and when this is released, the frame holding
the screen in place swings down and the screen can be pulled out. I am not
aware of other screens being available but this facility might be for future
development if this camera had sold well (it didn’t).
I only
have one lens for this camera – a35-70 mm zoom. This is a fairly useful range
on a 35 mm camera. It has a 52mm filter thread at the front. It claims to be a macro lens – many lenses falsely make this
claim – and it certainly focusses down to about 200 mm at the 35 mm focal length
and a bit closer at 70 mm. This does not give true macro (image size on the
film/sensor the same as the subject size) as the smallest subject that will completely
fill the 36 mm film frame is 180 mm but it certainly gives close close-ups.
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| bayonet on lens showing contacts |
The lens
has four focus indexes (yes, that should be indices) – one in white for normal
focusing, one in red for focusing infra-red images at 70 mm, one for infra-red
at 50 mm and one for infra-red at 35 mm. The way these indexes work is this:
first focus the object normally and read the distance scale by the main white
index mark. Next, move the focus ring until that distance is against one of the
red infra-red indexes. The image will now appear to be out of focus to the
human eye, but the image on infra-red film will now be in sharp focus.
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| Infra-red focusing indexes |
The last item is
the dedicated flash unit. This slides onto the hot-shoe from the front (the
opposite way to usual). When it is in position, you depress and slightly turn
clockwise the red and black button on the rear of the flash unit. This locks it
in place firmly and pushes all six of the electrical contacts down onto the
corresponding contacts in the hot-shoe. There is a grey slider on the top of
the flash unit – sliding this to the right turns on the unit. It is powered by
the camera’s battery. At this point, operation is entirely automatic. There is
no need to worry about the synch speed for the shutter or which aperture to
use. This photo of the kid’s bike was taken with this flash unit with the
camera set to Av mode (aperture priority mode).
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| dedicated flash unit |
If you wish to
use the camera in manual mode with this flash unit, there is an aperture guide
on the top of the flash unit. To use this, you guesstimate the distance to your
subject and read off the corresponding aperture. Even in manual mode, the
shutter speed is automatically set to the synch speed which is 1/90 seconds.
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| flash unit in place |
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| cassette chamber with DX contacts |
Inside the
camera holds no surprises. There is a vertically travelling metal focal-plane
shutter. The cassette space is on the left. There is the standard row of six
sprung electrical contacts to read film speed and length of the DX code on the
cassette. To load the film, you pull the leader to the red line and close the
back. When you switch the camera on, the film automatically advances to the
first frame. When you want to rewind the film, there is a button and slider on
the base – press the button and slide the slider to the right and the film will
rewind.
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| yashica 230AF insides |
What else? A
couple of things. There is a clear window by the film cassette to you can both
see if a film is loaded and if so, what type. On either end of the camera is a
strap lug allowing the attachment of a neck strap - but what I have never seen
before, there is a third strap lug on the left near the base. This will allow
the camera to hang sideways or you could attach a shorter hand strap.
Test film
I have run a roll of Agfa Vista+ colour film through the camera with no hassles at all. The camera turns out to be quite easy to use even if not intuitive. I am quite impressed with the results.
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| hand-hells close-up in artificial light |
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| Child's bike taken in dark using the dedicated flash unit |
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| indoors hand-held |
