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<\/a><\/p>\nWhen the camera is powered up, having installed the battery and a 35mm film,<\/p>\n
there is a green light which appears right in the middle of the screen once it is focussed. The photographer then simply squeezes the shutter button and takes the photo.<\/p>\n When I worked in photographic sales in a specialist shop in Sevenoaks, we used to have customers coming in complaining about blurry images. It wasn\u2019t hard to establish that they had \u2018stab shutter\u2019 syndrome when using their cameras. I used to recommend the Yashica T4 camera; this worked well for them, being small and simple to use. The green light alerted them that it was time to squeeze the shutter – gently. After taking the shot, the film advanced automatically until they reached the end of the 12, 24, 36 etc allocation.<\/p>\n It also had the facility, by pressing a grey point on the bottom of the camera, to wind the film back before it was finished. It was important to make a note of how many frames had already been taken. You could put, say, a black and white film in a canister and then retrieve it, load up the camera and take more black and white images. How does it compare to its competitors at the time, which were the compact Olympus cameras?<\/p>\n In the eighties Olympus made both the Olympus \u03bc1 and the Olympus \u03bc2. The difference between them was primarily the aperture of the lens and the size of the camera, with the \u03bc2 being the smallest.\u00a0 I preferred the Yashica T4 for four reasons\u2026<\/p>\n My overall view is that, if they made a digital version of my T4, I would buy one tomorrow. They still have much to offer the black and white street photographer.<\/p>\n Colin’s quick test.<\/strong><\/p>\n I loaded the Yashica with a roll of Fuji Velvia 100 transparency film and took the camera out and about with me for a few days, taking photographs in several locations and various subjects. Sample photographs<\/strong><\/p>\n Words by Mark<\/p>\n Photographs and additional text by Colin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is my favourite \u2018point and shoot\u2019 film camera. It\u2019s a compact camera, even smaller than my phone; it has the following specifications: Size – 116.5 x 63.5 x 37mm Weight – 170g Lens – Carl Zeiss Tessar 35mm f3.5 … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n
\nThis neatly brings me to one of the disadvantages of the Yashica T4. It has a little catch which releases the film door. The makers set it up to make it hard to operate so no-one accidentally ruined a film, but they overdid it! It can be tricky to use for those with small fingers.
\nWhat do I like about the Yashica T4?<\/p>\n\n
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\nThe camera is neat, compact and very easy to use. Focus is silent, with minimal sound from the shutter. Exposure is very accurate (the reason I used transparency film was to test the accuracy of the metering). The film advance is less than quiet, so as Mark\u00a0 mentioned earlier do bear this in mind if you wish to take a discrete photograph.
\nImages are fairly sharp, note though that the focus spot is fixed in the centre of the frame. If your subject is off centre use the focus lock which involves lightly depressing the shutter release button but take care because the shutter button is very sensitive and can be triggered by quite a light touch.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n