Half the Frame, Double the Fun: Yashica 72-E

This lovely looking half-frame camera is the perfect compromise between a slim, portable camera, and an excellent lens and performance. And you can cram an incredible amount of pictures on your roll.

Let me introduce you to the charming Yashica 72-E: a 1960’s half-frame camera with a 28mm manually-focusing (f2.8-22) lens. It has close-focusing to 0,80m. The shutter has speeds of B, 1/8 – 1/250. The selenium cell which surrounds the lens accepts film speeds from 10 – 400. Once the film speed is set, the meter read-out on the top of the camera provides an EV number, helping you to manually set the right aperture.

This camera sat at the bottom of a plastic bag given to me by a friend containing half a dozen books on photography, a bunch of filters, a cable release, and a heap of assorted bits and pieces. I was thrilled to find out it was a half frame camera, since I didn’t have a proper half frame yet. Well, I had a Diana Mini, but I mean a half frame camera with an actual glass lens, and some control over the settings. It didn’t disappoint me.

The Yashica produces very nice pictures, sharp and crisp. The light meter on top looks really cool I think, and is very useful in deciding an aperture. The winding mechanism at the bottom left of the camera in stead of the usual top right adds a nice quirky touch. At first I thought the winding mechanism was faulty, because the roll just wouldn’t end. It turns out that you can just fit an incredible number of pictures on one roll of film. It is in fact called 72-E because it fits 72 pictures on a roll, but that’s not accurate. You can fit in more. I love the way the half frame format can easily lead to diptychs and triptychs.

It came with a faux suede camera bag and a yellow filter. The filter is easy to forget when you switch from b&w to color (I have some bright yellow pics to prove it)…

written by stratski on 2012-10-19 #gear #review #yashica-72-e-half-frame-rangefinder-35mm