Yashica Minister III

This is a rangefinder camera from Yashica that is pretty standard for its time.  It is almost exactly the same size as Zeiss Ikon's Contessa LKE of the same period and looks very similar as well. It is slightly larger than Voigtlander's Vitomatic II which is slightly earlier.

lens:  Yashinon-DX

focal length:  45 mm

apertures: f2.8 to f22

focus range: 0.8 m (2.6 ft)

lens fitting: fixed

shutter: Citizen

speeds: 1 s to 1/500 s

flash: PC socket

film size: 35mm

The camera is quite heavy - 656g including a 24 exposure cassette of film. This weight is going to tell at the end of a busy day photographing. It is 135 mm long and 85 mm high. The body is 35 mm thick which increases to 85 mm when the lens is included.

Yashica Minister II ((C) John Margetts)

 There are not many controls on this camera - it is entirely manual. On the top plate, starting on the left, is the rewind crank. This also pulls up to release the cassette for loading/unloading. Next to this is the accessory shoe. In flash terms, this is a cold shoe. next to this is the meter dial. This has two components: ASA setting and meter read-out.  ASA can be set between 10 and 400 ASA (new style). Behind this is the read-out for the meter. This gives you EV numbers between 4 and 18. In use, you choose the EV number the needle is pointing to and transfer this number to the outer most ring on the shutter housing. You are quite at liberty to ignore this if you want to - if you are using a hand-held meter, perhaps - or using the flash.

Next in line is the shutter release button, which is towards the front of the top plate. This is a small (by modern standards) chrome plated button, threaded for a standard cable release. Beside this is the film advance lever. Right on the right-hand end of the top plate is the frame counter. This is automatically reset when you open the back and counts up from 1.

The front of the camera has the viewfinder and rangefinder windows and the shutter housing with lens. The viewfinder is quite large and bright and has bright-line frame lines. In the centre of the viewfinder image is the yellow rangefinder spot. This is plenty large enough without getting in the way and is nice and bright. The rangefinder is coupled to the lens.

The shutter is made by Citizen - no model name is given - and it is a leaf shutter. The shutter housing is fairly large and central.  Partly, it looks large compared to Compur and Prontor shutters of the period as it is straight sided rather than stepped. There are three adjustment rings on the housing. The inner most, marked in green, is the focussing ring. This focusses from 0.8 metres to infinity and is marked in both metres and feet. Strangely, there is no pointer for this scale and the pointer position (where the pointer would be if there was one) is well to the right of centre. I suspect the designer thought there was no need for a pointer as the user is intended to use the rangefinder but I would be more comfortable if there was one. 

The outer most adjustment ring, marked in red, is where you set the EV numbers from the light meter. Even though the meter only offers numbers from 4 and higher, the ring is marked for 2. Setting this ring gives the user a range of both shutter speeds and apertures. Once the EV number is set, you can rotate the middle adjustment ring - the shutter speed ring - to change the shutter speed. Doing so also alters the aperture so that the required exposure is maintained. There is no direct method for adjusting the aperture, but there is a small window immediately behind the shutter speed ring showing the set aperture. If you want a particular aperture (which I usually will) you can alter the shutter speed until the desired aperture is displayed in the window.

Minister III - rear view ((C) John Margetts)

On the base of the shutter housing is a small lever which sets the delay timer. Although we are always told not to use this on an old camera, I can report that it works very well on this particular old camera.

In the front of the shutter housing, around the lens, is the light meter sensor. This is a selenium sensor and so needs no battery - there is no problem with this camera of having to find a replacement for an obsolete mercury battery. Many 'experts' will tell you that old selenium meters are too unreliable to be worth using. This is based on the fact that the light sensitive surface deteriorates with time and then gives low readings. While this is true, if the meter has been kept in the dark except when being used the deterioration over 60-odd years is so slight as to present no problems. I have many selenium meters that are 60-odd years old and they all give accurate readings and I shall continue to use and trust them. I doubt those 'expert' who decry using old selenium meter have actually tried using them.

The advantage of having the light meter sensor around the lens is two fold. Firstly, it is always pointing in the same direction as the lens and secondly, if a filter is used, it fits over the sensor and no adjustment of the meter reading is required.

The lens is a Yashinon-DX lens (I do not know the significance of the 'DX'). This lens has five elements in four groups and is reputed to give very good results. The focal length is 45 mm so the angle of view is very close to the human eye and accordingly will give natural looking results. The largest aperture is f2.8 which might not seems to be particularly fast, but, to be honest, I never shoot much wider than f8 so I just do not care that the lens does not go to f2 or f1.8

This camera has a PC (Prontor-Compur) connector for the flash and this is, idiosyncratically, place on the left-hand end of the camera.

The base plate of the camera has the usual tripod boss - this is the 1/4 inch Whitworth thread - and it is placed centrally behind the lens which means the camera will be stable when on a tripod. Also on the base is a recessed button to free the internals for film rewind and, at the opposite end, a recessed button for unlocking the back. I find this hard to use - you need to slide it to one side and then press it in. Perhaps with time I will find it natural, but not yet.

27/10/14

I have now completed my test film and I am quite impressed.  The camera is easy to use - the light meter works well as does the viewfinder.  I had some flare when shooting into the sun but I did not use a lens hood. Generally, the lens has good contrast and colour rendition.

I took the picture of the reed flower to test the lens at maximum aperture.  The flower is nicely sharp and the background not sharp - as I would want it.  These were all taken in October, so not a lot of sun about.

The cathedral from the footbridge over Broadgate, Lincoln.

The Strait, Lincoln

main railway line, Lincoln

Reed flower

Young Love

Olympus μ Zoom 115 (also Mju Zoom 115)

This is a sophisticated point-and-shoot camera. It is clearly a development of Olympus's XA series. The camera opens by sliding a cover to the right, exposing the lens and switching on the electrics. Controls are minimal making it very much a point-and-shoot camera. In fact, it is quite possible to ignore the few controls provided and then you have a basic point-and-shoot with a 38 mm lens (and autofocus).

Closed/off

All of the controls are on top of the camera. On the far right of the camera is the zoom control. This defaults to the shortest focal length of 38 mm. This is slightly wide for a 35 mm camera but not excessively so. 'Normal' for 35 mm (the diagonal of the negative) is 43 mm. Pulling the control will zoom the lens to 115 mm (hence the name of the camera). A nice touch is that the viewfinder also zooms so the viewfinder image always matches the lens image.

Open/on

Next to the zoom control is the shutter release. This is a fairly large chrome plated button. This is easy to find by touch which is as it should be.

Next to the shutter release are two small chrome plated buttons. The front one sets the delay timer and the rear one sets the flash mode. There are six flash modes. Default is the flash firing when there is insufficient light without it. The first selectable mode is red-eye reduction where the camera fires a few low intensity flashes to make the subject's pupils contract before the main flash. The second mode is no flash - this allows you to take moody pictures in poor light. 

Third mode is the flash always on. This is for fill-in flash when the background is brighter than the subject. The fourth mode is night-portrait mode - this restricts the flash to illuminating the subject while leaving the background dark. The fifth mode is a combination of the first and fourth modes - night-portrait with red-eye reduction.

Next to these controls is a small LCD display. This gives minimal information: frame number, flash mode, delay on/off. To the left of the LCD display is a small pop-up flashgun.

Telephoto position (115 mm)

On the back is the viewfinder eyepiece. This has a dioptre adjustment so us spectacle wearers can use this camera without our glasses. Also on the back is a small window to allow the user to see what sort of film is in the camera - or, indeed, if there is any film in there at all. This is a simple but very useful facility for those of us with several (!) cameras as it is very easy to forget which camera is loaded with which film.

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Blog (c) John Margetts 2014
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On the base is a standard (1/4 inch UNC which is just about the same as the old standard of 1/4 Whitworth) tripod boss. This is right on the right-hand end of the camera. This is not a good place to have this (in the centre is better and under the lens node is ideal) but I doubt this camera ever gets used with a tripod. 

Also on the base is a recessed button to allow for rewinding the film before it is finished. When the film is finished, rewind is automatic.  The battery chamber is on the right-hand end of the camera. The battery is a CR123 lithium battery which is still readily available.

Back

I currently have a film in the camera and I will report on using the camera and the image quality when the film is finished.

20 September 2014

I have my test film back from Snappy Snaps and here are the results.  This camera is rather easy to use - the only real awkwardness I have experienced is that it is a bit small for my hands - then again, this is a compact camera!

Image quality is certainly good enough for snap shots, which is what the camera is really for.  I would not use it for serious photography, but I might carry it on those occasions when I do not want to be encumbered with kit - a night out, perhaps.

The first few are of a herd of cows/calves at Frampton Marsh RSPB nature reserve, Lincolnshire (near to Boston).  I am quite pleased with these - I like cattle - but the close-ups show a design weakness.  The camera is happy to take a picture when it cannot focus.  At the least, a warning would be nice.

This flower was blowing in the wind outside the visitor centre at Frampton Marsh. It has been captured fairly well - indicating that the automatic exposure system has selected a fast enough shutter speed. I have added a crop of the top flower to show how well the camera has captured detail - quite well, I think.  The graininess of the magnified picture will be a mix of the grain of the Agfa Vista + film and the medium quality scan I asked the lab to do.

Crop of the top flower.

This next picture was taken in poor light with mist in the distance. It is the British Sugar sugar beet processing factory at Bardney seen across a field of wheat stubble.

 

The next three are close-ups taken in a wood. The first is not very impressive - I cannot make out what the white blobs are although I suspect they were fungi of some sort.  The third picture is exposed quite well, but the first two show the limitations of the camera in challenging conditions.

The next is Lindum Hill in Lincoln. A bright but not sunny day - all seems to be well.

The rest are of Wells (in Somerset, not Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk I usually photograph). The camera has done well here - I could use this camera for street photography as it is quite discrete in use and works well in an urban situation.

Ica Icarette A (or B?)

Ica was a camera manufacturer based in Dresden and owned by the Carl Zeiss Stiftung.  Ica is an acronym for Internationale Camera Aktien Gesellschaft (the Aktien Gesellschaft part is the German equivalent of the British PLC or USian Inc).  Ica is one of the companies that merged to form Zeiss Ikon in 1926.  After 1926, Zeiss Ikon continued to make Icarette cameras but this one is clearly marked 'ICA Akl Ges' (the usual abbreviation is AG rather than Akl Ges). This means it was made prior to 1926. I can date it more accurately (but not very accurately) by the Body Number (E42012). In 1926 when the merger to form Zeiss Ikon occurred, Ica were up to the letter 'L'. For each letter, Ica made 100,000 cameras so the seven letter difference indicates 700,000 cameras.  After the merger into Zeiss Ikon, production by the much larger business only used two letters of the alphabet each year. The smaller Ica, which was also trading during a much tougher time, is unlikely to have used more than one letter each year which pushes the date of this camera back to 1919 at a best guess. The Icarette model was introduced in 1918 so a date of 1919 (or perhaps 1920) is more than reasonable.

I also have a later Icarette made in about 1930 by Zeiss Ikon.

Ica Icarette A (or B?)

My particular camera has been 'well loved'. Although it has the signs of having been used well, it is in quite good condition for a camera that is 90-odd years old. The main defects are: someone has attempted to remove the rear element of the lens. The metal of the securing ring has gouge marks and there are significant scratches to the matt black paint in the area around the lens. The front two elements of the lens are also loose-ish - loose enough to remove by hand. The inside of the back has been repainted in places by hand and someone has added a home-made catch for the lens board.

Left-hand side view.

Wear and tear includes the leather (not leatherette) covering starting to peel and fray at the edges in places. The steel parts have some surface rusting. Someone has removed the wire frame from the viewfinder. The only other significant defect I can find is the locating pin for the lens standard. On opening the camera, it is necessary to pull the lens forward by squeezing the two plated lugs below the lens. The lens then pulls forward on plated rails until it locates on the pin mentioned above. This pin is visibly worn and no longer locates the lens standard properly.

Rear view of the inside.

I shall now give a general description of the camera.

It measures 125 mm by 80 mm by 30 mm when closed (by 90 mm when open). It weighs **g. The lens board is central on the front and opens downwards. The outside of the camera is very plain. It is entirely covered in black leather which is minimally decorated with straight line tooling.

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Blog (c) John Margetts
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The top of the camera has the film advance knob on the left. While the back is on the camera, this is securely held in place. Once the back is removed, the advance knob pulls upwards to release the take-up spool. On my camera, the advance knob becomes completely detached but I am not sure this is as it should be. The knob locates with two pins - one short and one long (6 mm and 33 mm, respectively). The long pin has a flattened part half way along. Inside the camera, besides where the spool goes, is a small hole that aligns with the flattened part of the long pin. I suspect that this hole once contained a screw that allowed the long pin to move the length of the flattened part and no further - about 5 mm. The knob itself contains a ratchet so that the knob cannot turn the wrong way and loosen the film on the spool.

Front and right-hand view.

The back of the camera has a red window placed centrally. The camera takes 6 x 6 cm photographs and so uses the middle row of numbers on the film's backing paper.  The film size is 117 (now obsolete) which is the same size film as 120 but on a smaller spool - a bit like 620 film. 117 has essentially the same size spool as 620 but uses the 120 size key-hole on the end of the spool, rather than the smaller 620 key-hole. I could (but won't) rewind some 120 film onto the spool that came with this camera and use it. As this camera has a focussing issue, I shall not bother.

Camera closed

ready for winding on.

Ready to use.

Using the rear viewfinder window. When the viewfinder window is all the way down (in the closed position) it covers the red window and prevents any light getting into the camera and fogging the film.  To wind-on the film, you raise the viewfinder part-way to expose the red window.  When taking a photograph, you raise the viewfinder all the way, covering the red window again.  Ingenious!

In order to load the camera with film, the back must be completely removed. This is done by depressing two plated studs on the right-hand end of the camera. The model B Icarette had an optional back for glass plates and perhaps this detachable back indicates that mine is an Icarette B rather than an Icarette A.

The front of the camera opens downwards and fits into place with a definite click. In the face of the lens board is a tripod boss.  As I mentioned, the lens must be pulled forwards until it locates on a pin to keep it in the correct position. The lens is attached to the body with leatherette bellows. These seem to be in good condition with no visible holes or splits. Focussing is achieved by moving a lever on the lens board which moves the shutter/lens forwards and backwards. Focussing with this camera is not critical - the distance on the scale between infinity and one metre is about one cm.

The lens is a 75 mm Novar lens (inscribed as being 7.5 cm, as was the fashion pre-WWII)It has a maximum aperture of f6.8 and a minimum aperture of f36.  The sequence of apertures is not the modern one. It goes: 6.8, 9, 12.5, 18, 25, 36. These numbers are very hard to read as they are behind the mount for the Iconometer viewfinder.

The shutter has no name or other identifying marks but I am sure it is a Gauthier Derval shutter. It has two blades only and offers 1/25, 1/50 and 1/100 speeds as well as B and Z. Z (marked as T on export models) opens the shutter which then stays open until the release lever is pressed a second time. There is a threaded socket for a standard cable release.

On the left side of the shutter housing is a Brilliant viewfinder. It was normal at this time to offer two finders - a brilliant and a frame finder. This Brilliant finder is in remarkable condition. the mirror in brilliant finders seem to be plated straight onto steel and in old cameras is usually corroded enough to make using the finder very hard to use. This one is quite usable.

The top of the shutter housing is supposed to mount the wire frame part of the other viewfinder (called an Iconometer by Ica). The mounting is still there but the frame is missing.

The shutter is made with a sideways movement of 8 mm either side of central - a total movement of 16 mm. I am not entirely clear what this is for. I understand vertical shifts of lenses to reduce/remove perspective problems in architectural photography  but not horizontal shifts. It might be that, given this camera produces square negatives, that it was intended for the photographer to use the camera on its side when this becomes a vertical shift but I have not convinced myself.

Olympus C-315 zoom

OK.  I am going to use a naughty word - digital. There - said and nothing bad has happened.  This blog has always been about my old film cameras - not digital for the simple reason that I do not collect digital cameras. I have nothing against digital cameras and I do own a rather nice digital SLR - a Canon 650D - but they do not entice me in the same way that film cameras do.

Olympus C-315 zoom - closed

So why have I bought this 'old' digital camera? Well, last summer Bestbeloved and I went to Edinburgh for the day. I wasn't feeling particularly well and could not face carrying a camera around all day. My collection of old cameras are all metal and even the lightest are heavy after a day walking around the delights of Scotland's capital. My single digital camera - the 650D - is also heavy and requires lenses to be carried as well.

Of course, I spent the day seeing things I wanted to photograph and couldn't. I decided then that I needed a modern, small and very light plastic digital camera that would sit in my pocket unnoticed until I needed it.

Olympus C-315 zoom - open

It has taken me until this week to find one at a price I was willing to pay. I ought to say that I have not been looking very hard! Having bought the camera, I found that I needed an XD card which are no longer made. So, today I have camera, card and batteries and I have been out and about Lincoln trying the camera out.

The camera is small - 10 cm by 5.5 cm by 4 cm - no so small by very modern standards, perhaps, but it is the smallest camera I own - and it weighs 200 gram with the batteries fitted. I would certainly be able to carry this camera around all day with no trouble.

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Blog copyright 2014, John Margetts
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Being digital, it is mostly controlled by menus. There are minimal external controls. On the top are two controls - the shutter release and a zoom control. On the back there is a small 36 mm by 26 mm LCD display which takes up about half the back. Above the display is a small viewfinder and next to that is the on/off-playback-photograph switch.

To the right of the display is what seems to be the standard four direction buttons with a central 'OK' button. Above this is a quick display button so you can chimp your work. On the left-hand end of the camera is a power input socket. The right-hand end is rather more cluttered. There is a door covering the XD card slot, another door covering the battery compartment and an attachment point for a wrist strap.

Olympus C-315 zoom - back view

The base of the camera has a central tripod boss and a small electrical socket. I am guessing that this last is concerned with the 'Imagelink' mentioned on the front of the camera - that is, a direct connection to an Olympus photo printer. The front of the camera is also fairly plain. There is a small telescopic lens, the front of the viewfinder, a small flash window and a red LED.

I shall now go over the controls individually before discussing how the camera behaves in action. The main control on any camera is the shutter release. this is to the modern standard - a plain, smooth button basically flush with its surroundings. unlike the shutter releases on my film cameras, there is no thread for a cable release.

When you press this shutter release, several things happen. First, the lens is focussed. Then the exposure is calculated and set, then the shutter opens. This is not a fast camera and there is a delay of two to three seconds between pressing the release button and the shutter opening. You can forget about the decisive moment with this camera. Once the photograph has been taken, there is a further delay while the picture file is written to the card. On all quality settings the write time is about five seconds which much reduces your photographic ability.

The button next to the shutter release is the zoom control. This is marked 'W' and 'T' - wide and telephoto with no indication of focal length. This control works quite well and is about the only control with no time lag. What I did find impressive is the way that the zoom control also zooms the viewfinder keeping the viewfinder image close to what the sensor sees. There does not seem to be any parallax adjustment when the lens is close focussed but that might be asking a bit too much. 

Moving to the back of the camera, the on/off switch suffers from a great deal of delay. When you switch the camera on there is a delay of three seconds before there is any noticeable activity. A feature I do not like is the way that the camera reverts to defaults when you switch it on. That is Program mode and HQ quality. I have been using the camera in landscape mode and SHQ quality but that is not retained. Yes, I can easily reset those but that is inconvenient and it would be nice if the camera made a note of the settings when it was switched off.

If you do not use the camera for a short while it goes into a suspended mode to conserve power. When you press any button the camera powers back up - but with a considerable delay. The screen is below the on/off button and takes up most of teh left half of the back. Information on the screen when shooting is: the current mode (there are seven to choose from), the focussing point (centre of the screen), shooting mode (single or burst), image quality and remaining shots. There are four quality settings. SHQ and HQ are the same resolution (2592 x 1944 pixels) and I assume that SHQ saves the file with less compression. SQ1 has a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels and SQ2 a resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels. The proportions of each is 4:3 which is rather more square than I am used to with either 35mm film or my Canon DSLR. That is not to say it is bad, it is just not what I am used to.

Next to the screen is the quick view button. Pressing this displays the last photograph taken. Initially, the quality and frame number are displayed but only for a few seconds - after that you just get the uncluttered picture. In SHQ and SQ the display also shows the date and time of the picture, but not in HQ for some reason. While you are viewing a picture with the Quick View button, moving the zoom control to 'W' will display 16 thumbnails at a time (or 9 or 4 - the number can be set with one of the menu items). You can manoeuvre through these using the direction buttons - moving the zoom control to 'T' will display the highlighted picture full-screen. 

The direction keys do various things depending on the mode the camera is in. In shooting mode, they are as follows: the up button sets/resets macro mode, down button sets/resets the delay timer, left button allows you to choose shooting mode and the right button sets/resets the flash - the flash can also be used to prevent red-eye. The central 'OK' button brings up the shooting menu. This allows you to set quality, white balance (auto, sunny, cloudy, artificial light) and the mode menu (exposure compensation, digital zoom, secondary macro mode, single or burst and (if you have the right Olympus XD card) panorama mode. A further menu allows you to format the card and a third menu I am not quite sure what it does. I have no manual or operating instructions and I am doing this by experiment. When you are at a menu item, the central button confirms that particular item.

When viewing your pictures, the left and right direction buttons move to the next/last picture and the up/down buttons toggle between the first and last image. A second press on the up/down buttons moves ten images.

On the right-hand end of the camera is a USB port for downloading pictures to a computer. I do not have the CD-ROM that came with the camera with instructions and software, but this works well without either on my Linux (Ubuntu 14.4) computer. As an experiment, I tried formatting the XD card with my computer rather than with the camera - the camera did not like this and insisted on formatting the XD card again before I could use the camera again. As a further experiment, I tried to upload a photograph from my computer to the camera - this did not work. Rather, it did but the camera would not admit to the photograph being there.

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Blog copyright 2014, John Margetts
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Using the camera.

The camera I easy to use - I have been doing so with no instructions at all and I have had no problems. The test pictures I have taken are below. I am generally pleased with these. One thing that is worth mentioning is that they are all a bit flat. The light was good and I would have expected a bit more contrast and colour saturation. No real problem as this can easily be fixed in the Gimp (or Photoshop, for my rich readers).

What is worth noting is the second interior shot. This was taken at the lowest resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. If you look at the top of the black picture frame you can see the effects of the individual pixels as the frame is stepped rather than smooth - compare with the first picture which is at the maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels.

All pictures in Lincoln and copyright John Margetts.

Same as above but tweaked in the Gimp

using the macro setting

High quality

Lowest quality