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yashinon

Yashica Rapide

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The Yashica Rapide (also sold as the “Rapid”) is a vertically oriented 35mm half-frame camera introduced by Yashica in 1961. The launch of the unusually styled Rapide completed Yashica’s entrance into all segments of that era’s consumer camera market with the exception of medium format SLRs. The only other camera that I know of that looks like the Rapide is the Taron Chic. However, since they were both introduced in 1961, it’s unclear as to who copied who or if there was indeed any intentional copying at all.

Yashica EZ-Matic Electronic

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The Yashica EZ-Matic Electronic is a viewfinder camera made for the 126 film cartridge introduced by Yashica in 1969. Its older brother, the original Yashica EZ-Matic, is pretty high-end for what it is with two exposure modes (automatic and aperture priority), accessory shoe, and self-timer. Unfortunately, this EZ-Matic Electronic variant has none of those things.

Yashica Electro 35 GS

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The Yashica Electro 35 GS is a variant of the wildly popular Yashica Electro 35, the first ever camera with full electronic automatic exposure. The GS model you see above also sports gold-plated electrical contacts and boasts a “Color Yashinon” 45mm f/1.7 lens which is completely identical to the standard (greyscale?) Yashinon but was named as such by their marketing department to capitalize on the growing popularity of color film at the time.