Yashica Electro 35 GSN with fixed 45mm f/1.7 lens.
Like all rangefinders, this is a manual focus camera. To focus, you turn the focus ring to align two ghost images in the viewfinder. When the ghost images are aligned, the subject will be in focus.
Exposure controls are all located on the lens barrel.
There are 3 rings on the lens barrel. The closest to the camera body is the focus ring. You turn this ring to focus your subjects. The next ring is the aperture ring. You can make aperture selections from 1.7 till 16, in steps of 1 stop. The last ring is to select the desired mode. B is bulb, Auto is self-explanatory and the lightning symbol is for flash. If you put it to Auto, it will be in aperture-priority mode. You select the aperture and the camera will decide on the shutter speed.
Bottom of camera. The left-most button is used when you want to rewind the film after you're done shooting. In the middle you have the tripod mount. On the right is the battery compartment.
The GSN requires a battery for metering. The meter will tell the camera how much light is available and to adjust the shutter speed accordingly. The light sensor is a CdS and it's essentially a light dependent resistor that measures the light and controls the shutter speed. The metering system here is purely analog.
From left to right: film winder, flash hotshoe with cover, and exposure warning lights.
The film winder is to wind back to film to the canister after you've finished a roll of film. The flash hotshoe is for mounting an external flash. There's a PC port to fire studio strobes as well. The exposure warning lights will tell you if your selected aperture is too big or too small. Let's go into details.
Let's say you're shooting a very bright scene and you select f/1.7 as your aperture. This will let a lot of light through and will no doubt cause overexposure of the film. When you depress the shutter halfway (half-shutter), the red light will come on telling you that shutter speed is at maximum already and if you take a photo, it will come out overexposed. So when the red light lights up, just follow the arrow and turn the aperture ring to the right. This will increase the aperture number (reducing aperture opening) therefore letting less light through and preventing your photo from being overexposed.
But if you are shooting in a dark room and you have your aperture at f/16. This will let very little light through and you will have to expose the film for a long time. The orange "slow" light comes on telling you that shutter speed will be slow (below 1/30 sec) and you are advised to get a tripod or turn the aperture ring to the left. Turning the aperture ring to the left will decrease the aperture number (increasing aperture opening) and letting more light through so shutter speed can be increased. The "slow" light is in orange because it's not exactly a warning. It is just to let you know that blurry photos may result from camera shake due to the longer exposure time.
Because the GSN is such an automatic camera, there are just 2 lights to tell you what to do. You either turn the aperture ring right or left. Perfectly understandable for those who are not so technically inclined. These are also visible in the viewfinder as lighted arrows.
Film ISO (ISO and ASA mean the same thing) select knob.
All cameras before the digital days had to have a way of knowing what type of film is being used. Usually this means that the photographer will have to set it manually on the camera. That is what the knob above is used for. Later on, film canisters were (and still are) encoded with conductive strips that can be read by cameras so never again will you spoil a whole roll of film because you set the camera to the wrong ISO. Might do a separate writeup on that next time.
From top left to right: Viewfinder and battery test switch. From bottom left to right: place where you put the film canister, lens, film advance spool.
If you look carefully at the back of the lens in the above photo, you can see the leaf shutter. This leaf shutter is what makes rangefinders ultra quiet and have flash sync at its highest shutter speed. This camera can do flash sync at 1/500 sec. That's better than the RM14k Nikon D3 which can only sync up to 1/250 sec! Not having a mirror also reduces the noise when shooting.
A few things that I've left out: the film winder lever on the far left with the black fitting and the shutter release beside it.
Before the shutter can be depressed, the film must be wound using the film winder lever. Only when the lever is fully advanced can the shutter be released. There is also a collar on the shutter release that allows you to lock the shutter to prevent inadvertent release of the shutter. When the shutter is depressed approximately halfway, the warning lights will come on if there are any problems with the exposure. The shutter release is threaded so a remote shutter release cable can be screwed on.
Also, if you look at the picture above, on the right of the "atomic" logo, there's an aperture opening. That is where the CdS photocell is located. And the aperture is controlled by the ISO select knob. The higher the ISO, the bigger the aperture to let more light through therefore effectively compensating for the sensitivity of the film.
First roll of film to go in.
Operation is simple enough. Load the film, wind the film using the film winder lever, focus. and click away. After every exposure, just wind the film and continue shooting. Once you've finished up the roll of film, use the rewind lever to rewind the film back to the canister. Then pull the rewind lever up to open the back. Take the film out and load a new one.
Will most probably be shooting with this tomorrow. Will also post setup details of this shoot soon.
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