• Home
  • Reviews Index
  • Best Gear
  • Inspiration
  • Learn
  • Disclaimer
  • Staff/Contact Info
  • Media Kit
  • Membership
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Cameras

Yashica Electro 35 GSN Review: The Best Cheap Rangefinder Camera?

Chris Gampat
5 Comments
07/26/2011
6 Mins read
chris gampat the phoblographer yashica electro 35 gsn camera reivew (1 of 4)

Last Updated on 04/13/2023 by Chris Gampat

The Yashica Electro 35 GSN is a rangefinder camera that I personally purchased and that has been a dear love of mine since for street photography. After testing the Leica M9, M7 and the Fuji X100 (though the last is not a rangefinder), there were a number of reasons why I made the purchase. Besides the affordable cost combined with sharp lens, wonderful metering, and ease of use, the camera is built to last. But is it for everyone?

Table of Contents

  • Tech Specs
  • Ergonomics
  • How to Use One
  • Metering
  • Image Quality
  • Conclusions
  • Please Support The Phoblographer

Tech Specs

  • From 1973 Yashica Camera Co., Japan
  • Film type 35mm (up to ISO 1000)
  • Weight 24.6oz (697.4g) sans battery
  • Lens Color Yashinon DX 45mm f1.7 (Color was just a marketing term)
  • Filter size 55mm threaded, 57mm slip-on
  • Focal range 2.6′ to infinity
  • Shutter Copal Elec (Leaf)
  • Shutter speeds B, 1/30, 30s-1/500 aperture priority (1/500 ONLY sans battery)
  • Viewfinder coupled rangefinder with auto parallax correction
  • Exposure meter lens mounted CdS, over/under lights in viewfinder. Other rangefinders had the meter on the lens for more accurate readings.
  • Battery originally PX32 5.6 Mercury, will accept 6v 28A or 4LR44 via an adapter from the Yashica Guy
  • Hotshoe
  • Self-timer
  • Battery check lamp
  • Fast-action wind lever

Ergonomics

The Yashica Electro 35 GSN isn’t an extremely small camera. In fact, my Olympus EP2 and the Fuji X100 are much smaller. However, the camera houses the equivalent of a full frame sensor: 35mm film! Yes, this is a film camera. The front of the camera is plain and simple. There is a lens, the rangefinder, the meter and nuclear symbol.

When you look at the top of the camera, you’ll see some serious business going on. One has the film advance lever with the film counter next to that. Then there is the shutter release. To lock it, one just needs to turn the dial to the locking position. This essentially turns the camera off in some ways. The shutter button is threaded to accept wired releases. Next to that is the ASA/ISO setting. This is by far one of the best ways I’ve seen it presented. Not only is it easy to access, but difficult to change and therefore throw off the camera’s metering.

Next to that are the Over and Slow lights. You’ll see this in the viewfinder, but that will tell you when the camera is overexposing or you’ll be shooting at a slow shutter speed. To compensate for these accordingly, you’ll need to adjust the F-stop until you reach a balance. In fact, the camera is Aperture priority only unless you switch to the bulb setting.

Next to the lights you have the hot shoe and the film rewind lever.

On the lens you have the apertures, the focus (with distance scale for hyperfocal length shooting) and some extra settings such as auto shutter, bulb or high speed flash sync.

How to Use One

First off, note that there is a major quirk to loading the film. In most cameras when you load the film, it wraps around the advance spool in a clockwise fashion. In the GSN, it goes counter clockwise with the advance still pushing it clockwise. This helps to protect your film if the back opens up, though not by much.

Focusing works exactly like a Leica or Voigtlander Bessa rangefinder. If you want to see how that works, check this out.

When you’ve taken a photo, you just need to advance the film. When you’re all out of film, you pop the button in on the bottom of the camera and rewind the film in the direction that the film rewind tells you. After you’re all done, just pop the back open, take the film out and reload.

A quick word before I go on: there is no advance lock. So if you advance the film once, and then advanced it again without firing, it will advance the film and you will have lost an area of film that you could have shot on.

Most photographers that use this camera will most likely keep it stopped down as the manual focusing will mean that you’ll need to take extra time to get the photo. To take the maximum advantage of this camera, you’re best off stopping it down when outside and often being aware of how far you’re focusing out at all times. When you see a scene that you love, just get right up to it and snap it.

Metering

If you don’t want to pay attention to the camera’s meter, consider the Sunny 16 rule. However, I’ve seen from my film prints that the metering is actually quite good and very accurate. However, there is a problem. I really wish that there were an exposure lock function so that I could focus on one part, meter for the other part, recompose, and get a better exposure.

In the scene above, I had to focus on the woman in the dress and then recompose my image. To focus on her, I had to put the circle in the middle of the viewfinder over her. The problem is that when I recomposed, I was no longer metering for her but for another area. That’s a huge bummer because this image could have been much better.

At other times when you meter for what’s in the center, you’ll often have perfectly exposed photos. Kodak Porta 400 VCis a wonderful film and has a great look to it if you expose your subject correctly.

Metering in low light when centering your subject is also very accurate.

Image Quality

For the most part, this lens is very sharp and when stopped down, only good things can be said about it.

In the photo above, the lens wasn’t stopped down as much and was probably open to f1.7. The lens can be softer then. But in addition, try to hold still especially if the meter is telling you that the exposure will be slow (as it did in the photo above.)

Most of the time though, you’ll often be very impressed by the image quality when combined with good film. This photo was once again taken with Portra.

This photo was taken with expired Kodak Gold 100 (5 years.) However, the image quality still looks quite good. That’s partially a testament to how good the Yashica’s lens is.

The bokeh of this lens is okay. I wish it were creamier, but everything that is out of focus is still pleasing and not harsh at all.

When you use Lomography 800 filmyou’ll need to remember that this isn’t digital and that film grain will be there. Said graininess may take away from the sharpness of the images. In my eyes at least, I felt that the lower ISO films were plenty sharper.

However. 800 film will be essential for bars with low light. You’ll still also need to shoot wide open, which will add to your image’s softness. With that said, I wish that the Yashica’s lens were even faster.

Conclusions

So is the Yashica perfect? No, but it’s still very close to it. Called by many to be one of the best film rangefinders ever made, the Yashica Electro 35 GSN is easy to use, delivers sharp images, is portable, tough, and quite attractive looking. In terms of image quality, it can deliver some very good images if you choose the right film. I would not suggest using it with chromes because of the fact that you really need to nail your metering on that part. For those, you’re best off shooting full manual and this camera doesn’t have that.

For the street photographer that wants a rangefinder but that doesn’t want to dish out the money on a Leica, you’ll be in luck. The Online Photographer stated that one should spend an entire year shooting with one film, one camera and one lens. If you were to do that project, I’d recommend this camera. The 45mm focal length can handle nearly anything and the lens can also deliver some very stellar images.

However, if you’ve become spoiled by the more manual settings of a DSLR like exposure lock, you’ll be yearning for those features to help you create better photos.

But can you really complain for the price? I’d deem you crazy if you did.

Please Support The Phoblographer

We love to bring you guys the latest and greatest news and gear related stuff. However, we can’t keep doing that unless we have your continued support. If you would like to purchase any of the items mentioned, please do so by clicking our links first and then purchasing the items as we then get a small portion of the sale to help run the website.

Electro 35 film GSN lens lomography metering rangefinder sharpness street photography Yashica
Shares
Written by

Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
5 Comments
  1. Jim Bonner

    03/02/2018 3:19 pm
    Microsoft Edge 16.16299 Microsoft Edge 16.16299 Windows 10 x64 Edition Windows 10 x64 Edition
    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.110 Safari/537.36 Edge/16.16299

    I spent this past week shooting with this camera. You failed to mention how quiet the Copal shutter performs. I don’t even have a spare battery as I know that with daylight shooting one can set the aperture to a rough estimate of an exposure for 1/500 default.

Comments are closed.

Previous Post

How to Shoot Street Photography with a DSLR

Next Post

Which One: Olympus VF-3 or VF-2?

The Phoblographer © 2023 ——Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
  • Home
  • Our Staff
  • Editorial Policies
  • Media Kit
  • Membership
  • App Debug