If you’ve followed this website, then you are familiar with the Kickstarter-backed rebirth of the iconic Japanese camera namesake Yashica in the form of the upcoming Y35 digital camera model (you can catch up with this article “The Return of Yashica – Kickstarter Project”).
Yashica’s digiFilm vision of an analog past reborn, love it or hate it, was wildly received on Kickstarter – raising over a million dollars in just two days!
The recent stretch goal announcement on Kickstarter by the Yashica team to raise funds for an upgrade to the camera’s lens to a F2 lens was also joined by a missive that teased a new metal body and perhaps even a larger sensor for the camera. These two features are interpreted as a response to photographer complaints about the original Y35's proposed body style.
Indeed, much of the focus of initial criticisms of the Yashica Y35 centered on the camera’s lack of a metal body and its controversial analog role-playing digiFilm concept.
Some critics feel like Yashica could have avoided this criticism by coming out with a metal body camera and a larger sensor right out of the gate according to The Phoblographer.
Yashica Y35’s initial price point of $100, which included two digiFilm rolls, is quite reasonable for an entry-level device and it remains to be seen if the Kickstarter team can maintain this price point with the proposed upgrades to the device, upgrades that many think would command numbers much larger than that price point.
The Kickstarter-backed Yashica capitalized on photographers’ collective nostalgia for devices of the past and the digiFilm concept was designed in an attempt at mirroring the rituals of shooting pictures that characterized the photography of an almost bygone time.
While certainly strange in the digital age, others see it as a truly unique market offering, one that gives a photographer an experience different from that of every other digital camera on the market, a remarkable feat, considering the niche is bursting with innovation.
The digiFilm rolls only switch the Y35’s picture mode. They do not store photos captured.
Pictures taken with the Yashica Y35 are stored on an SD card like any other digital camera.
The Y35 looks like the classic Yashica Electro 35, an early example of an electronically controlled shutter and a paragon of camera design.
You can check out the Yashica Kickstarter page by clicking here.
