Please provide pictures, feedback and alternatives to the Yashica Mat 124G

[jduncan]

Hi,
Does anyone has this camera? do you have pictures? have you replace it by a better TLR?
do you have any suggestion of a better options? if so could you explain why is better?

Thanks !

 

[bensonga]

My first medium format (and TLR) camera was a Yashica Mat 124G. It served me well for a couple years, but I replaced it with a Mamiya C220f and never looked back.

I liked the build quality and simplicity of the Mamiya C220 and the excellent optics of the Mamiya TLR lenses. The ability to use interchangeable lenses is also a plus.

Gary

 

[bensonga]

Taken with the C220 many years ago in Galveston, TX.

 

[MGrayson]

Also my first MF camera. Still have it over 40 years later. Very sharp, light, and inexpensive. I loved shooting with it. Ended up moving to the Pentax 67 system which, while more flexible, was less fun.


Matt

 

[Godfrey]

Does anyone has this camera? do you have pictures? have you replace it by a better TLR?
do you have any suggestion of a better options? if so could you explain why is better?

I have, over the many years, owned and used six Rolleiflex TLRs and two Yashicamat 124Gs. The last of my Yashicamat cameras I sold some time before 1985 ... when exactly is lost in the mists of my memory. I probably have some prints I made with it, somewhere, but nothing falls to hand immediately. Same is true for my Rolleiflexes. I know I sold the last of the Rolleliflex TLRs some time in the very early '00s, used the money to help buy my first Hasselblad 500CM. That one too is long gone, but the other two I bought a decade and some later are still here, still in use.

The Yashicamat 124Gs I had were about 90% of a 1952ish Rolleiflex MX-EVS in performance and, to me, about 60% of the feel of said Rolleiflex. It was simpler and less expensively constructed. The early 124G lens was very nearly the equal of the Rollei's Zeiss 75mm f/3.5 Tessar, but they simplified the Yashica's lens a year or so after I bought my second one, and the new lens was not an advance on performance; it was pure cost cutting. There weren't, to my knowledge, the range of accessories and such available for the Yashica that there were for the Rollei ... 35mm back, sheet film back, macro accessories, etc etc.

The second and last of my Yashicamats was sold off shortly after a woman came to the store (I was working in a photofinishing lab at the time) and asked me if I knew anyone interested in "this" ... a leather case full of a complete '52 MX-EVS kit ... I asked how much she wanted, she said $150, and I borrowed the money from my boss on the spot and bought it. I sold the Yashica for around $60 ... practically new in the box ... and was delighted with my new - old Rolleiflex. The guy who bought my Yashica was another customer at the shop and I saw him make a lot of very nice photos with it over the next year and some.

Good cameras. Sturdy enough. Try to be sure you get one with the earlier lens.

G