If at First You Don’t Succeed: Yashica Premiers Branded 35mm Film

The much-vaunted Yashica revival that fizzled out last year wasn’t enough of a market response for the people behind Yashica to hang up the towel and call it a day.

While digiFilm didn’t catch on, Yashica is hoping some company-branded 35mm film will be just the thing to put them back on top.

Or something like that, no one is really sure why this is happening.

Why this is so interesting to many of us in the photography world is that the Y35 that Yashica launched thanks to Kickstarter funding wasn’t just a bad camera, it was awful.

In many ways, it became a symbol of why you should be skeptical of any Kickstarter project with bold, big promises.

Given that performance, why would anyone want to trust Yashica to sell them quality film?

The reveal began on March 31st with the cryptic message, “We will have many Negative’s News start from Today.”

April Fool’s Day rolled around and Yashica didn’t say anything about it but the company did post a series of weird photos to its Instagram. At this point, most people just thought the message was some part of an April Fool’s joke but that’s not the case.

Then the company posted the rolls of film that it is planning on making but, as eagle-eyed Facebook commenters pointed out, the picture is Photoshopped, and poorly at that according to PetaPixel.

At this point, everyone on the Internet started giving Yashica the what for, with many recalling the glorious failure that was the Y35.

But it gets even better because Yashica apparently wasn’t done being weird.

The company then posted to social media a graphic with the text: “Great Pictures always developed from Negatives.”

Well, isn’t that profound?

None of this is a joke though and the company seems to be moving forward with making its own 35mm film.

If you’re curious, you can check out the sample photos over on Canon Irista.

As always, we'd love to know your thoughts. Be sure to leave them in the comments section below.

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About Author

Kehl is our staff photography news writer since 2017 and has over a decade of experience in online media and publishing and you can get to know him better here and follow him on Insta.

5 Comments

I think we should always be circumspect about comments on a company’s products. It’s pretty tough out there, in the photography business – margins are slim, the market’s shifting all the time, and we NEED suppliers, so there’s no gain for anyone in negative comment.
Beyond that, Yashica are to be commended for joining in. The market for film, in particular, is still small – but growing rapidly (it’s easier to do, starting from a small base – the same jumps in sales figures are no longer “rapid growth”, when the overall market is already big).
Something must have changed since I was shooting film – a large proportion of today’s film is 400ASA/ISO – I used to shoot mainly 100, and also a lot of 40, to avoid issues with grain.

I bought one of those Digifilm cameras. I’ll never give them another dollar- no matter what they are doing.

This is the universal consensus on the Internet. Thanks as always Kent 🙂

The first camera I ever had was an Yashica. I loved it and keep believing in them that someday they will make a comeback I am willing to wait and see.

A lot of people are disappointed by the whole digiFilm product it seems. Sad to see such a storied name go this way. Thanks for your comment.