Yashica Electro 35 CCN: A Great Wide Prime Lens

Produced between 1970-1975, the Yashica Electro 35 CCN is one of the many versions of the Electro 35. I’ve been hunting this for many months and finally found it at a flea market in Basel (CH) and it was an amazing deal, I got it for just 15 CHF (12€)! For the same price I got also an Olympus 35RC but that is another story.

Here it is, a real black beauty, rock solid and with a gorgeous viewfinder! The nice thing about this camera, as the name “Electro” suggests, is that it is totally automatic! The shutter works in Aperture priority: set the aperture, focus with the lovely rangefinder, click, and you’re done!

I had some troubles finding an appropriate battery, as it works originally with a mercury 5.6V battery. I couldn’t find one of these but I found out that a series of 4 small 1.5V batteries worked as well! The camera has a nice battery check light that came very handy to verify the efficiency of my alternative solution!

I finally got the chance to test it out some weeks ago with a Fuji Superia 200 film, which may be too sensitive for shots at f/1.8 but I got some nice pictures as well! Here are some shots that I took at my grandparent’s house!

Sometimes you can’t shoot at f/1.8 and the camera is smart enough to tell you when you’re overexposing or underexposing your pictures! Inside the viewfinder, when you half-press the shutter button, if there’s something wrong with your aperture setting you’ll see a red arrow (overexposed) or a yellow one (underexposed). These little lights worked perfectly! Here are some other shots that I took during an ordinary day in Venice.

I am very satisfied with my new toy. The lens is a bit yellowish but this adds some nostalgia to the pictures and I find it a big plus! What else can I say? The camera features a lock for the shutter (useful when you put it in a bag full of stuff) and has a 52m m diameter which is a very common size for filters and caps (I use the cap of my Canon 50 mm f/1.8 when I carry the Yashica around).

My advice is to have at least one of these little gems as I have already fallen in love with rangefinders and will shoot a lot of others rolls with this camera!

This article was written by Community member regi_a. Don’t forget to upload your shots with the Yashica Electro 35 CCN to your LomoHome.

geschrieben von regi_a am 2011-10-10 in #Ausrüstung #wide-angle #35mm #review #automatic #aperture-priority #f-1-8 #yashica-electro35-ccn