A couple of years ago, I was in Berlin for my birthday and treated myself to a Yashica T4 in a little camera shop just off the Ku’Damm. I had heard a lot about this little point and shoot (P&S) 35mm film camera. The Yashica T4 (or T5, which is very similar), is one the most hyped P&S film cameras out there. It was popularised by fashion photographer Terry Richardson, which has pushed the price up quite a bit. It’s still cheaper than two other hyped P&S cameras, the Contax T2 and T3, which were also made by Yashica, then owned by Kyocera.
The Yashica T4 is a bit like an economy version of the Contax cameras. All three of these cameras have a Zeiss Tessar lens, but the Yashica has slightly slower lens at f3.5 compared with f2.8 and the body is made of plastic, not titanium. Still, the lens on the Yashica, can focus very close (from 0.35m) which put it in a premium compact category in that sense.
I have not shot with the Contax P&S, but am a fan of their competitor the Nikon 35Ti, although I find it a bit of a frustrating camera (I’ve blogged on this before). Back in Berlin, I decided to test it out with a roll of Fujifilm Provia 100F slide film. I normally shoot transparency film to test out a camera for the first time to see if the meter and shutter are working correctly. Slide film is a lot less forgiving if the exposure isn’t accurate.
The first thing I noticed about the T4 is that it is about the worst sounding P&S I can remember using. Crk Urggggh is how I’d describe the sound of the shutter and motor drive. The camera was in mint condition when I bought it, but the first time I released the shutter I wondered if there was something wrong with it. Apparently, this is how the thing actually sounds.
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised when I got the roll developed back in Shanghai. That little Zeiss lens is sharp and contrasty. The flash is also quite punchy for such a small camera. The flash is quite bit harsher than something like the Nikon 35Ti, which has a subtle and balanced TTL fill flash. The metering was spot on too.
It was interesting to shoot with the Yashica T4 after playing around with the Olympus mju II for so long. In some ways these two cameras are similar, but in one crucial way not at all. Both are made of plastic with a few different flash modes. The T4 has a default setting of full auto with other options for flash on, fill flash and flash. You can set the focus to infinity, but that’s it.
The main difference in the two cameras is the character of the lenses, which are quite different. The Zuiko 35mm f2.8 lens on the mju is nowhere near as sharp as the Zeiss lens and also has much lower contrast. I think photographs from the mju have a similar feel to old German rangefinders, which might be one of the reasons, the documentary photographer Robert Frank liked them so much.
Although I’ve always loved the mju, I probably prefer the T4 now, although the curved shape of the mju does make it more pocketable that the more oblong-oblong-shaped Yashica. I’d still recommend either of these camera to anyone who wants a high quality P&S without bells and whistles. The Yashica is currently going for around US$200 to more than double that while the mju II, which used to be a bit cheaper than the Yashica, is now around the same price, if not more expensive.
Here’s a little gallery from that first roll around Berlin and at San Souci Park out in Potsdam.
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