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Yashica-E TLR

I found this camera in Arundel while walking around with a wedding client.
We popped into an indoor emporium called Nineveh House for a browse, and upstairs was my kind of treasure shop.
It was full of old leather bags, record players, bakerlite radios and things from yesteryear.
Tucked away in the corner was a cabinet stuffed with photo bits and bobs so I started digging and the boutique owner came over, I told him of my love for old cameras and with pride he showed me some of his favourites including a box brownie. I look for cameras that grab my attention, they might have a unique design or strange mechanism. After digging a bit he produced a beautiful tatty leather case, and inside was this beautiful Yashica-E.

Yashica E TLR by Matt HarquailIt’s from the 1960s and has two lenses which is known as a ‘TLR’ which stands for Twin Lens Reflex. This is where the top lens is used for focusing and composing the image, and the bottom lens holds the shutter and aperture for creating the image. Reflex means there is a prism or mirror in the composing lens which projects the image onto a focusing screen.

Yashica E TLR by Matt HarquailThis camera is pretty unique, it has a fixed shutter speed of 1/60th of a second and the only variables you have control over are the film speed and the aperture. You can shoot this camera on full auto too.
The two dials in this picture are for focusing on the right and film advance on the left. That top part is what you look through to compose your image.

Yashica E TLR by Matt HarquailThe beautiful circle holding lots of tiny lenses is the in-built light meter. This Yashica happens to be one of the first TLRs to have in-built ambient metering.
The shutter is primed by a lever to the left of the taking lens, and released by the chrome button on the bottom left. It makes a silent but satisfying click.
Blurred on the right is the PC sync port for flash which means this could make an interesting studio camera!

Yashica E TLR by Matt HarquailWhile looking at the composing lens, you’ll notice the green lever to the left, this selects the auto function and apertures from f3.5 to f22
To the right of the lens is the metering needle, it’s not very accurate but it’s useful!
Underneath the Yashica nameplate is a bulb based on board flash.

Yashica E TLR by Matt HarquailThis is the composition screen on the TLR. It’s square like the picture it takes, and features a flip out magnifying eyepiece for more accurate focus.
The great benefit of looking down into the camera, is that you can hold the camera at waist level ,and without a camera stuck to your face you can communicate with your sitter using normal eye contact! It’s good for getting great candid pictures too.

Yashica E TLR by Matt HarquailYou load the film using this beautifully over engineered open-close dial. It’s my favourite part of this camera and It releases a clasp and the spring loaded door opens.

Yashica E TLR by Matt HarquailInside the door is a pressure plate for keeping the medium format film running flat and smooth, the ‘120 film’ refers to the width of the film being 120mm.

There you have it, the Yashica-E. I photographed it while in friends clump on the Ashdown forest, the same place from the kudos panorama in my next post.
I’ll post some example pictures next time I fire up the darkroom, and might even shoot a fashion feature with it one day. Till then check out some more images below and check out my other camera features!

Tech Specs

Name: Yashica-E
Age: Around 50 years old 1964-1966
Type: twin lens reflex film camera
Lens: 80mm f3.5 fixed
Medium: 120mm Colour or B&W roll film
Shutter: leaf shutter, single speed: 1/60

Ashdown Forest Matt Harquail Kudos PanoramaYashica E TLR by Matt HarquailYashica E TLR by Matt HarquailYashica E TLR by Matt HarquailYashica E TLR by Matt HarquailYashica E TLR by Matt Harquail

Happy Horseradish

My vault of found faces is huge. I’ve been collecting properly since 2011 and find that Paredolia enriches my daily life.
I love finding these personalities in everyday objects, hopefully it will enrich yours too!

Out for dinner, this Happy Horse radish was pleased to help us.

This door is always surprised to see you

This guy is such a mug!There is something about this Vent Axia employee that tells me it loves it’s job!This Initial employee looks a tad worried, I would too with a mirror in my mouth!Subtle pen mark or an unhappy switch?BEER! -IT’S AMAZING!See more Paredolia posts by using the tiles at the top!

Simon & Yella

This arrived yesterday….

….and inside was a beautiful treasure that unfortunately I don’t get to keep, but Simon & Yella do!

This is their beautiful wedding album designed by me and put together by hand in Italy by the talented craftsmen at Graphistudio.

Simon and Yella went for a 30x30cm 32 double page book, with thick, matt laminated pages, using true photographic paper, all wrapped in leather with gold foil name de-bossing, and a recessed cover image to finish it all off.
They also chose the new image wrap presentation case, (which does it’s job perfectly), 4 parent books and 30 of the perfect little Mignons which are great to send with your thank you cards and maybe a magnifying glass!

In the back of the presentation case lives a secret area for a Disc printed by me,
The disk holds all of their polished images from the wedding album, the designed pages and a lowres version of everything for easily emailing or transferring to a mobile device. They also get all of the images in a high res version on a USB as standard from the wedding. Hand made leather Wedding Album. Bespoke Design by Matt Harquail manufacture by graphistudio in italy with presentation boxHere is everything lined up next to each other starting with the image wrap presentation case , the leather bound album itself, followed by one of four parent books, and one of the little Mignons. Hand made leather Wedding Album. Bespoke Design by Matt Harquail manufacture by graphistudio in italy with presentation boxThe nicest part of this creation was being able to see the look on Simon & Yella’s faces when I delivered the album. The whole process has been fast paced with quick decisions, as before Christmas Graphistudio had some awesome offers, which enabled us to get a great discount. It did mean working to the wire  to get the discount and I was finalising the upload of the design on New Years Eve!

All of my album designs are bespoke and created in house. There are no templates used, and every image is individually placed to ensure your perfect story is told. Then we decide on who is going to build it!

Here are some of my favourite pages from the album

You can see more image details of this beautiful album by clicking on the thumbnails below

Hand made leather Wedding Album. Bespoke Design by Matt Harquail manufacture by graphistudio in italy with presentation boxHand made leather Wedding Album. Bespoke Design by Matt Harquail manufacture by graphistudio in italy with presentation boxHand made leather Wedding Album. Bespoke Design by Matt Harquail manufacture by graphistudio in italy with presentation boxHand made leather Wedding Album. Bespoke Design by Matt Harquail manufacture by graphistudio in italy with presentation boxHand made leather Wedding Album. Bespoke Design by Matt Harquail manufacture by graphistudio in italy with presentation box
Wedding Album Bespoke Design Matt Harquail By graphistudio

This treasure arrived at just the right time; Just when I was emailing them to say it was on it’s way, Simon called me and said that they would be off to Berlin at the end of the week.

I took delivery of the album, photographed it and hand delivered it all in the same day. It was a pleasure to watch them go through the album and see how happy it makes them both.
Knowing also that it has all worked out so Yella’s mum in Germany will get to see it and have her own copy hand delivered, is pretty awesome too.

I wish them all the best and you can see Simon & Yella’s full design below. If you are interested in finding out more about my album design and wedding photography services please feel free to get in touch!

Smokers Station

Lets kick off this week’s faces with this guy found outside a Brighton Bar, the added sticker works perfectly as a small white goatee!pareidolia, Faces in things

Found this stitching on my friends Jeans, she did wonder why I photographed her bum!pareidolia, Faces in thingsThis Guy is known as Mr Punchy,pareidolia, Faces in things

This one seems slightly asphyxiated and probably doesn’t like being covered in plastic! pareidolia, Faces in thingsHappy to be a total ‘Tool’ -Box that is! pareidolia, Faces in thingsThis old man carrot came out of the fridge with the eyes and nose but he hadn’t made his mouth so I added it in!pareidolia, Faces in things

Compur

Knowing that I collect vintage cameras, my friend Steve came across this beautiful example sitting in a vintage shop in Tunbridge Wells.

He called me when he found it and said, “I’ve found a plate camera it’s a bit rough and needs attention Shall I get it?”  After checking that it has its lens I said “yes” confident that I could have it repaired if need be. At this point the thought of this camera conjured up ideas of dabbling in the wet plate process which creates stunning one of a kind images on metal or glass plates.

That evening I went around to discover the treasure that he has found, and a treasure it really is.
The is camera is circa 1920’s and uses glass plates sensitised with the same emulsion that features on film today.  It is a bit of a  Frankenstein camera with the body and shutter being made by separate companies in Germany and the lenses manufactured under licence from the camera importer.

This camera happens to have been commissioned by the prestigious Wallace Heaton LTD who had the royal warrant from the Royal family!

As I said this camera is a real treasure and I love cameras that have a story so I’ll start the images off with its canvas case which graces the name and address of the photographer who loved it; A.R Webb 36 Broom grove Rotherham

 

The re manufactured canvas bag interior has separate areas for used and fresh plates and these areas happen to be made from an old photograph of a horse and owner which is quite apt seeing that I photograph horses!The camera itself it a beautiful, well proportioned shape wrapped in leather, It’s weighty and an intriguing box to openThe camera is a work of art in itself, the beauty and precision of this reminds me of a beautiful clock movement. The camera  extends onto a rail for focusing and has full tilt/shift capabilities which means this was quite a technical bit of kit in it’s time!  This is the shutter mechanism up close, starting from bottom left we have the shutter release followed above  by the ZDM and IBT dial

Z stands for Zeit which means Time in German, you use this to focus using the screen as seen in the image below
D Corresponds with B on the dial, and the B has the same function as Bulb mode on your modern SLR where you determine how long you want the shutter open for
M corresponds with I on the dial, I can only guess that this means ‘Moment’ in German but this is what you use to take the picture.

The Wheel with the arrow at the top is where you determine your shutter speed above this are your aperture controls as well.
There is a lens to the right for quick composition and below that is the shutter priming lever.The camera also features a flip up composition sight as a another means of framing your image, I like to see it as the LCD screen of yesteryear!With the Glass screen in place you compose your photograph then replace this with one of the Glass plate carriers below, remove the dark slide and then take your picture then reverse to safe guard your negative When we explored what we had we found that there was a glass plate left in inside one of the carriers! I was so hopeful that it hadn’t been exposed so I developed it to find out but alas it was pure black so I stripped it back and will use it another day!I love the Patina of this camera and am really looking forward to the unique glass plates that I will create this summer but until then I’ll have to stick with crudely inserting 120mm film and making scratched and strange portraits. The main thing is that they have their charm and that’s what makes all of these cameras so awesome!

Tech Specs

Name: Wallace Heaton Zodallar Anastigmat
Age: Around 86 years old 1920s
Type: Dry plate tilt and shift bellows camera
Lens: 120mm f4.5 fixed
Medium: 120 mm B&W dry gelatine plate
Shutter:
Compur leaf shutter, eight speeds: 1/1- 1/2-  1/5- 1/10 – 1/25 -1/50 – 1/100 1/250

I’ll leave you with two images of my friends taken using the camera looking all vintage and that!A few more image details of the camera: