How to Disappear with an Original Yashica-Mat

1800 1013 Stephen Hennessy

TLR (twin lens reflex) cameras produce high-resolution film negatives on 120 film, without the bulk and weight of bulkier medium format and large format cameras. Though the TLR design existed prior to the arrival of the German Rolleiflex in the late 1920s, the Rolleiflex’s popularity throughout the 1940s and 1950s inspired many imitators abroad. Among these was Yashica’s Yashica-mat.

The Yashica-mat from Japan was introduced in 1957 as Yashica’s premium TLR entry, and was closely modeled after the contemporary Rolleicord. While not the company’s first camera in the twin lens format, the Yashica-Mat included such features as an improved Tessar taking lens (four elements in three groups, vs. the three elements in three groups triplet found in Yashica’s earlier cameras), a ten-blade continuously adjustable aperture, discrete control wheels for f-stop and shutter speed, and the namesake: a sturdy, foldaway film-advance lever that automatically cocks the shutter when turning over to the next frame. The ‘Mat would directly compete with Minolta’s Autocord released a few years prior, but would retain the Rollei-style focusing knob that Minolta had replaced with a unique front-mounted focus lever positioned below the lens assembly.

My World Through the Yashica-mat

By 2019 I’d already been considering my first medium format camera when my composition teacher reached out to me, letting me know that she was selling her grandfather’s gear. It felt like fate that the person I had studied with and worked for during all of my graduate studies would happen to have a Yashica-Mat for sale. I wanted a break from my SLR, and desired something that would let me concentrate on the slow and deliberate capture of Autumn colors. Fortunately for me, the previous owner kept all of his equipment in immaculate condition, but I suspect that if he were more careless it might not have mattered: the premium old-school TLRs of the 1950s and onward are wonderfully engineered regardless of where they were manufactured, and can certainly withstand a bit of abuse in the field. 

In researching this article, I was surprised to find that my example was most likely produced among the very first run in 1957, as evidenced by its 80mm “Lumaxar” labelled taking and viewing lenses. It’s a contentious debate over whether or not Yashica sourced a different manufacturer when the ‘Mats of 1958 were released with “Yashinon” branded lenses, but the argument is moot except to camera historians. By all accounts there’s little discernible difference in image quality between them.

Having shot a few rolls of color negative film through September and October, I decided to challenge myself as a landscape photographer. This meant subjecting the Yashica-Mat to the hard handling that it was spared by its former owner. As a temporary escape from deep circumstantial depression, I left Northwest Ohio in the middle of November for the already-frigid Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with a five-pack of Fuji Velvia 50 slide film, hammock shelter, and a borrowed sleeping bag. 

The first night was spent camping alone in Hiawatha National Forest, where I struggled to start an adequate fire and froze all night, suspended between trees, swaying in the frigid wind in my poorly insulated hammock. I broke camp well before sunrise, with the only photo to document my site being a three minute long exposure illuminated by my car’s headlights, which might have benefitted from cooking a few more minutes longer. Not allowing the rough night to discourage me, I drove an hour to the bustling metropolis of Marquette, where I found redemption walking its streets and exploring the nearby Presque Isle Park just north of town.

For the duration of the trip, the combination of slow slide film and tripod-bound Yashica-Mat felt perfect. While slide film is uniquely challenging for landscapes due to its narrow exposure latitude, I felt that Velvia was ultimately in its element, as the perpetual overcast clouds did not blowout into nothingness, and its unique saturation introduced hale and hearty color into this quiet world. Had I brought the same combination during the peak tourist season, I would probably not be so happy with how the extreme contrast and saturation of blue skies and foliage rendered. 

Should you pick up a Yashica-Mat, or any vintage TLR for that matter? Well, if any part of the narrative “person gets sad, takes pictures of gloomy lake-scapes” appeals to you, then certainly! The typical 6x6cm frame caught on a TLR will yield a ton of detail for landscapes, and the workflow on these cameras lends itself to the slow work of framing, adjusting depth of field, and long-exposure (ideally with a shutter release cable – make sure to search for a Leica nipple adapter for your conventional screw-in cable release). 

The square aspect ratio isn’t just useful for your inevitable upload to Instagram. It will make you more sensitive to composing shots that take advantage of layering fore-/middle-/background elements. It will force us to adhere to or break the rule of thirds. It will punish us for off-level horizons. Many generations of Yashica-Mat were produced until the mid 1980s, and while some models will have light meters (with varying accuracy in 2020), all of them should offer similar picture quality.

While this review is largely informed by keeping my TLR atop a tripod, those who are interested in portraiture and street photography should not be dissuaded from the experience. The typical 75-80mm focal length of 6x6cm medium format cameras approximates the 41-44mm range for 35mm cameras, allowing your TLR to capture with a field of view that is similar to the trendiest of rangefinders. Portrait subjects will be framed within a perspective that isn’t much wider than your bargain bin nifty-fifty, but will further benefit from the narrower depth of field and higher resolution that only a larger negative can offer. While there is a heightened aesthetic factor to these larger, ornate machines, the leaf shutter used in a TLR is far more quiet than a SLR’s swinging mirror, permitting stealthy captures in a street or gallery shooting context.

Final Thoughts

Photographers today have it easy. Whether one prefers digital or analog imaging, it’s hard to imagine that anyone remotely serious about their picture taking won’t get by with the purchase of a single camera body that accepts a range of lenses to cover a majority of photographic genres. In 2020, every digital camera is excellent, and 35mm roll film remains an incredibly versatile format. I can only speculate what it must have been like to start out decades ago, when comparison shopping meant unpacking the pros and cons of 135, 120/220, 127, and other film formats, all without the help of the internet to assist (or confuse) our decision making.

With the standardization of sensors and camera architectures, creating an image that stands out in an Instagram feed of full frame digital and film shooters requires the artistic sensitivity that can only come from practiced familiarity with one’s tools, along with careful curation of subject matter. With most expressive media, it’s common to fall into artistic ruts. Photography is a rare practice in that it’s so dependent on its tools that changing up our equipment entirely can prove a shortcut to a richer personal expression. While an extreme reaction to the SLR and rangefinder experience might be to take up large format (with the Intrepid Camera bringing this option within reach of the budget-conscious shooter), an intermediate step could be to experiment with the compact medium format cameras of the mid-20th century. And the most invigorating of these is the TLR.

TLRs change the way we see the world, and change our photography in as universal a way. The mirrored image, the thoughtful process, the contemplative compositional gymnastics that they require, all stimulate our art. Above all, the TLR is perfect for those seeking a slower process in their picture taking. For all of its relative convenience compared to larger field cameras, a Yashica-Mat simply takes longer to position and adjust its parameters than the popular automation-assisted film cameras of the 1970s and 1980s. This requires effort. But the effort is rewarded with an unusual rendering and a high resolution image achieved at an absolute bargain of a price.

My Yashica isn’t a camera that I reach for often, but its ability to resolve fine details within a wide contextual area makes it a tool that I’m grateful to have, even when compared against my capable digital outfit. When I know the shot is worth it, I’m assured when I have the Yashica-Mat on hand, and the lessons on landscape photography that I’ve learned since swinging in the forest have carried into my everyday captures with SLRs and the Sony A7III.

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Stephen Hennessy

Stephen Hennessey is an analog and digital photographer, electroacoustic composer, Miata driver, and perpetual student from the central Virginia area. He often freelances in the sound and photo world as an escape from library work, and plans to begin studying Chemistry.

All stories by:Stephen Hennessy
10 comments
  • Very cool! I briefly had a 124G and it was much easier to focus than my Rolleiflex 2.8E or 3.5 MXV. Gave superb results, but unfortunately the seller did not disclose it needed a film transport service..

    It’s interesting how pretty much the most popular format now is square (Instagram etc). So this old tech is what peeps want now!

  • After years of resisting TLRs, they are now my favorite type of camera to use. Great for street photography and portraits. For one thing, a TLR looks like a real camera. It lent a bit of seriousness and credibility to my recent Pandemic Masked Portrait series. As my daughter said, It’s not like you’re going up to people sticking an iPhone in their face. And it’s a very friendly camera — you look down at the waist-level finder instead of holding it up to your eye. I think that allows more human contact between the photographer and subject. And many folks were curious about it, saying their dad had one, or would tell me a project they did in school with milk cartons and mirrors, or ask if you could still get film for one — “They still make film?!?”

    Anyway, I learned some things about taking portraits of strangers that I hope to apply when we’re no longer wearing masks.

    Pandemic Masked Portrait series, taken in my Brooklyn neighborhood with my Koniflex TLR:

    https://www.hookstrapped.com/album/masked-portraits-april-may-2020.html

  • David Millington June 26, 2020 at 11:09 pm

    “I can only speculate what it must have been like to start out decades ago, when comparison shopping meant unpacking the pros and cons of 135, 120/220, 127, and other film formats, all without the help of the internet to assist (or confuse) our decision making.”

    Stephen: we had things called libraries, where one could browse photobooks or the 3rd-party Guides and Handbooks for the different equipments, and the Kodak handbooks for the film choices. (Tongue is lodged firmly in cheek!!)
    There was a lot of information out there, pre-Internet; the Internet has just made us lazy in our research and thus, much of what is written about cameras, film, processing, etc., has to be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt!
    Added to the libraries were photo shops, which sold equipment and all the additional paraphernalia for making images – film, paper, enlargers, photo albums, etc.
    The staff were usually very knowledgeable and very helpful, as they wanted to have the sales and likely repeat sales.

    The TLR takes some getting used to, but is unobtrusive (in the main), quiet and provides great negatives from which to make great prints.
    I have several TLRs in my collection and have a Yashica Mat with Yashinon lenses; the results from this camera are very good.
    There’s a particular ‘look’ to a print from a TLR negative that people like and I’m one of them.
    Some folk don’t like having only 12 shots per roll, but I find I take less photos and waste less film, the more I use these cameras.
    Even tried covering local sports with one; wasn’t the greatest success, but a lot of fun!

    Only issue I have with TLRs is that they’re great talking points; if people see you using one in the street, they want to come and find out more about it and that’s your anonymity gone for the day!!

    Good article; glad you have enjoyment from this particular camera and film format.
    Regards,
    David

  • My first awareness of Yashica-Mat was in high school when one was available but I thought it looked soooo dorky I wouldn’t go near it. Much cooler was a Nikon or Minolta SLR – this is when “image” referred to the photographer, not the photograph. Jumping ahead 30 years I borrowed a Y-M EM and found out what I had been missing in negative quality and detail. It didn’t lead me to TLR’s (except for a brief detour to Rolleicord) but rather to Fuji rangefinders with their 6×7 and 6×9 cm frames, and eventually large format. I’m thinking I should get me hands on another Yashica (I would no longer be embarrassed by it). Nice article.
    And in response to David: camera research in the 60’s and 70’s went like this: 1. see an ad in Pop or Modern Photography; 2. send a stamped self-addressed envelope to a New York address; 3. wait 2-4 weeks to receive a product brochure; 4. decide whether to buy local (overpriced) or mail-order (maybe you’ll get it and maybe you won’t).

  • Chris and Carol June 27, 2020 at 2:03 pm

    Well done and well researched article. Your camera is fitted with Lumaxar 80mm lenses so it was likely produced towards the end of 1957. The first run of the Mat was released with 75mm Lumaxar lenses about mid-1957. A great source for all things Yashica is my friend Paul Sokk’s site at http://www.yashicatlr.com
    I’m always happy to see classic Yashicas still out and about. I hope you cleaned that lens at some point.
    Regards, Chris

    • Indeed, his site was indispensable, really a trove of information! I’ll admit I still need to find a proper lens cap, and the lenses get a little grubbier than I’d prefer.

  • Nice article and a really beautiful set of masked portraits on the link.

  • Dann Walker in Melbourne February 17, 2021 at 12:35 am

    Going back in time… almost 70 years – TLRs were the bee’s knees of cameras, those well-moneyed pros who could afford them went for Rolleis but the rest of us settled for Yashicas – a D in my case, in 1962, it cost me C$37 (Canada) which was a fortune for a 15 year old school kid aspiring to become a news shooter and do weddings and portraits, let alone the school yearbook photography (which in the end got done by one of the teachers who had a 2×3 Speed Graphic with a Metz electronic flash) and whatever other commercial bits and pieces one could pick up in a small town in eastern Canada.

    Fast-forward three years to 1966, when by happenstance I came across a Rolleiflex 3.5E2 at the local pharmacy, it had been ordered by the town dentist who put down C$100 as a deposit but passed away from a heart attack before the camera arrived. The widow kindly let me have the deposit and I paid the balance of C$195 in seven monthly instalments but the pharmacist kindly let me take the camera which I used as a trainee journalist, snapping sundry news photos which were published and paid the royal fee of C$5 each, a fortune in those days when Kodak Verichrome Pan cost 50 cents a roll and a brick (20 rolls) got me a 10% discount for a net price of C$9.50. Prices that must seem like small potatoes in this expensive-for-everything day and age but often after a wedding shoot (I charged C$50 for three B&W rolls with contact prints and two 8×10″ enlargements supplied for that fee) I would repair to the local cafe and grill for a 25 cent hamburger with the works with a side of fries for an extra 5 cents. Ah, yes, the good old days.

    I processed all my B&W films in the then-legendary Kodak DK-60a all purpose film developer and did my prints in Dektol. DK-60a vanished from the scene n about 1970 but I still finish my enlargements in home brewed D72 which is the early Kodak variant of Dektol. A few months ago on a whim I decided to whip up a small batch of DK-60a and used it to process half a dozen rolls of 120 TMax 100 which gave amazingly good results. Old dogs, new tricks.

    My almost 60 year old negatives still print well and scan beautifully. There was something truly special about B&W film in those days which seems to have been lost along the way, probably in the 1990s when the price of silver skyrocketed and film manufacturers started to cut corners. But some films are still better than the older variant – my 2021 Tmax negatives look, print and scan far better than the 1980s Tmax images I shot, I don’t know why but they till do.

    Onwards. The Yashica and my Rollei came with me to Australia when I migrated in 1976 by way of New Mexico (USA) in 1970, Vietnam in 1975, Bangkok and Malaysia (1976) and Sydney for an adventurous decade, now Melbourne since 1985. Along the way I picked up a Rolleicord Vb and two Rolleiflex Ts which still serve me well, especially as they let me use 16 exposure kits which in this expensive film day and age, give me 25% more mileage with each roll of (expensive) 120 film I use.

    The Yashica D finally went to a friend in Ballarat who donated it to a local camera club. When I last checked with the group in 2018 it was still on their camera shelf and now and then used by an aspiring medium format shooter. Good to know 120 film is still available in the city shops – scanned B&W film has an entirely different look from digital B&W, something luminescent in the tones that just cannot be reproduced digitally, I don’t know why or how but it’s there.

    This article and the truly wonderful images with it rekindled many happy memories for me.

  • Lovely bit of writing as well as the photographs. I recently got a Yashica Mat as part of a bigger auction of cameras I won (same model as yours). I was really amazed at how perfectly it still worked, and I also really enjoyed the entirely different way of shooting. It takes a few rolls to get used to it, but now I feel like it is the easiest camera to work with and the patience used in shooting it is very much rewarded in the photographs you get back.

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Stephen Hennessy

Stephen Hennessey is an analog and digital photographer, electroacoustic composer, Miata driver, and perpetual student from the central Virginia area. He often freelances in the sound and photo world as an escape from library work, and plans to begin studying Chemistry.

All stories by:Stephen Hennessy