St. Peters Episcopal Cemetery – Amelia Island, Florida. 2.2.2017
Camera: Samsung Galaxy S4
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The Palace Saloon… Florida’s Oldest
Centre Street, Amelia Island.
The Palace Saloon – Florida’s oldest bar. It opened in the late 1800s and was once the watering hole for the Carnegies (who had a mansion on nearby Cumberland Island) and the Rockefellers. It was the last American tavern to close during Prohibition! Still a favorite spot with locals and tourists alike.
Pirate Pete guards the entrance – only allowing thirsty people with money to enter.
Thanks for stopping by!
Chris
Hello and Welcome! Update 2.2.2017
Welcome to our blog about a very simple camera made by a company in Japan. We (Carol and Chris) are “Yashica Fanatics”, so it was a natural for us to start this blog dedicated to one of…
First Pics! Fujica GW690
We just got our first roll of film from our new Fujica processed with ‘The Darkroom’. They scanned the 6×9 negatives and zipped them to us. We couldn’t be any more pleased with the results.
As a refresher – this is the 1978 version of Fuji Photo Film’s GW690 medium format film camera. It is the last model to to be called ‘Fujica’. It looks great in this image and it is in very nice condition, but well worn from the thousands of rolls and exposures taken. It will settle in to a more quiet life with us as we can’t afford to buy and have processed 120 film and only get 8 exposures per roll. But we are super happy with it. Super sharp Fujinon 90mm lens transfers the image nicely to the 6×9 negative.
By the way… all of the images presented are direct scans from the negatives. No post production on our part – no crops or other messing with the images. Some I missed the correct exposure by a stop or two with my guesses. I was mostly shooting at 1/250 with 100 film at around f8 to f11. Neopan Acros is very forgiving.
As you can see, we’ve presented 6 exposures vice 8… 1 other was a duplicate and exposure 8 wasn’t on the roll! I think I may have wound past the first frame. We believe the level of detail and contrast of the Fujinon lens is superb. Did we mention that we’re big fans of Fuji’s Acros? We also love the 6×9 format too. I would say that I was surprised at the shallow depth-of-field in the truck image – I focused on the ‘GMC’ logo and as you may be able to see, I missed spot on focus.
All of the images were taken along Centre Street, downtown historic district, Fernandina Beach – Amelia Island, Florida. The post office building is ca. 1911. The clock tower is ca. 1891. The ‘Pineapple Patch’ building is ca. 1880s. You get the point – for the U.S. it’s kinda old – for most of the rest of the world they’re kinda new. It’s all relative. ^.^
Thanks for your visit!
Chris and Carol
Colorful Yashica Brochures… 1980s
A small collection of some 1980s Yashica and the Yashica-Kyocera sales brochures. We enjoy collecting brochures as they usually capture a slice of life for that period (at least in the marketing folks view of things). Enjoy!
Cute brochure from around 1980 featuring the Yashica Auto Focus. Yashica’s home office was still in Shibuya-ku Tokyo at this time. Kyocera was in Yashica’s near future and it would signal the beginning of the end!
Another nice sales brochure from October 1981. The cameras featured in this brochure are the Diary, Flasher, Snap and the Auto Focus Motor.
Yashica Auto Focus, Auto Focus Motor and Motor-D. These were technological breakthrough cameras for Yashica in the early 1980s. Of course at this same time, Canon had the A-1, AE-1, AE-1 Program and of course the Canon F-1. These cameras from Canon were all SLRs so not a fair comparison but Canon made similar compact rangefinder cameras. It was a tough go for Yashica at this time and a takeover was on the horizon.
What a cutie! Full color sales brochure from Yashica dated 1 March 1980. Features the Flasher, Auto Focus, Snap and the Diary.
Neat sales brochure from September 1980. In the early 1980s Yashica promoted its auto focus and auto exposure cameras extensively. This brochure featured the Yashica Snap, Diary, Flasher and the Auto Focus which listed for ¥41,000.
The dark days of Yashica begin with this very cute sales brochure from February 1984. Yashica by this time was taken over by the Kyocera Corporation which was headquartered in Kyoto. Yashica was now a just a division of Kyocera…Yashica was still in its long time office in Shibuya-ku. This move (Kyocera ownership) was the beginning of the end for the Yashica we knew.
When Kyocera killed Yashica (about 1991) they kept the optical portion of the company which was originally the Tomioka Optical Co., Ltd. of Tokyo. That division is still part of Kyocera and is now called Kyocera Optec Co., Ltd. and is still headquartered in Tokyo.
There you have it. A nice collection of some of the best of the 1980s Yashica sales brochures. As we mentioned, the Kyocera ownership was just on the horizon and the final days of the once great Yashica were coming to an end. We do own a few cameras from the Kyocera (Kill-a-Yashica) period and some were received as excellent point and shoot compact wonders.
A lovely Yashica-Kyocera L AF Date from 1986. Very nice lines and we’ll be running a roll through it very soon!
This good looking camera (above) was sent to us from a blogger friend and photographer living in Japan. She was very kind to donate it to us for sharing it on our blog. You can see excellent reviews of all sorts of cameras and awesome photographs too at https://cameragocamera.wordpress.com/
Another donated camera comes to us from a friend in Virginia and a fellow Flickr poster.
We haven’t run film through this beauty yet – it’s on our “catch up” list of things to do. Thanks to Ken for sharing his lovely camera with us so that we could share it with y’all here on the blog.
By the way, if you’ve got a nice Yashica, Kyocera or Fujifilm camera from this period (1980s to mid 1990s) and would like to see it featured here, just contact us through WordPress and we’d be glad to do it.
Many thanks for your visit – comments are always welcomed.
Chris & Carol ^.^
Fuji Petting with our Fujipet! New Pet Pics Posted…
The goal is to take our 1958 medium format camera from Fuji Photo for a little picture taking. We’ve loaded some fresh Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros (in days past it was Neopan SS) into the Fujip…
Yashica TL Electro-X ‘ITS’
After nearly five years of research and thousands of “searches” on auction sites, I finally have my answer! ‘ITS’ as it relates to the famous and groundbreaking Yashica TL E…
Source: Yashica TL Electro-X ‘ITS’
Yashica ‘Sailor Boy’ & Friends
Yashica’s three finest cameras in black. The J-3 was the first truly modern 35mm SLR from Yashica and it was their first SLR to be made in pro-black with matching black lens. Only a small amount of the J-3s were black – most were the traditional silver top and black leatherette body. On the far right is the most successful SLR Yashica ever made. Fully loaded with electronic everything, all commanded by its ‘IC’ brain. The next step on the evolutionary ladder is the TL Electro X ‘ITS’ (center). A mostly marketing idea, the ITS was essentially the same camera as the TL Electro X with the added gold ‘Electron’ symbol on the front of the pentaprism and the stylized ITS emblazoned on the camera’s left front (not seen here but can be seen below). The marketing folks at Yashica never said what the ‘ITS’ stood for (if anything). Our best guess is ‘Integrated Technology System’. Some say ‘Interval Timed Shutter’ as the shutter was electronically controlled and could fire at any speed. Later the Contax-Yashica ‘RTS’ was introduced and it was advertised as ‘Real Time System’ whatever the heck that meant.
We’ve used all three, and the TL Electro X with the white stylized ‘Y’ on the pentaprism is our favorite. It just feels perfect in your hand and the electronic over and under (exposure) arrows in red are easily visible in the viewfinder.
By the way, the advertising icon (Yashica Sailor Boy) was never given a proper name by Yashica. He made his debut in 1962 and still could be found kicking around in sales brochures and ads into the late 1960s. This guy is the 20cm (10 inch) dealer display model and he was in his sealed bag and box from Modern Plastics of Japan when we acquired him. He comes in about 3 other sizes and different styles and colors.
Thanks for stopping by!
Chris ^.^
Fading Florida…
Closed and forgotten long ago when the super highway passed it by. Abandoned and neglected. Sun bleached, baked and peeling – rust overwhelms then destroys. Plants invade, cracks widen, water seeps in. Rot and mold – bugs and rodents. Soon to collapse – no restoration – forest takes over.
Camera: Samsung Galaxy S4
Thanks for your visit!
Chris
Altocumulus Clouds… super cool!
Altocumulus (Ac) clouds progressively invading the sky. Real meteorological definition. Not often seen this dramatically in Florida. The late winter sun was at just the right angle which made for some interesting lighting. Typically these clouds would be about 6,000 feet above the ground this time of year and they are found in what is called the middle etage (Mid 5) of the atmosphere. There were no cirrus clouds above which added to the drama of the lighting.
Now a bit of fun with the clouds…
Thanks for your visit! Comments are always welcome.
Camera: Samsung Galaxy S4
Chris ^.^
