C41
Kodak Portra 400
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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The Yashicaflex C (Y variant) is a 6x6cm twin-lens reflex camera produced by Yashica Co. Ltd. around 1955. It is one of several sub-variants produced under the Yashicaflex C designation, distinguished primarily by the fitting of a refined waist-level finder with an improved ground-glass screen and a more precise fold-up magnifier. The "Y" appended to the variant designation follows Yashica's internal practice of tagging configuration differences within a model family, paralleling the concurrent Yashicaflex Y in the same approximate production period.
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C41
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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Kodak Tri-X 400 is a classic black-and-white film known for strong tonality, visible grain, and documentary character.
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Ilford HP5 Plus is a flexible ISO 400 black-and-white film with classic grain and strong push-processing tolerance.
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About this camera
A mid-1950s Yashicaflex C variant with a refined waist-level finder, bridging the Yashicaflex line toward the Yashica-C.
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Format | 120 film, 6x6cm (~12 exposures) |
| Mount | Fixed |
| Taking lens | Yashinon 80mm f/3.5 (Tessar) |
| Viewing lens | ~Yashinon 80mm f/3.5 |
| Year introduced | ~1955 |
| Shutter | Leaf: 1s - 1/300s + B |
| Flash sync | ~ |
| Meter | None |
| Film advance | Side knob, red-window frame count |
| Viewfinder | Waist-level, refined ground glass + magnifier + sports finder |
| Battery | None required |
Yashica's TLR program began in 1953 with the Pigeonflex and expanded rapidly through a dense sequence of Yashicaflex variants in the following two years. By 1955, competitive pressure in the Japanese budget TLR segment - from Minolta, Ricoh, and other domestic manufacturers - pushed Yashica to differentiate within its own line through incremental specification changes. The Yashicaflex C designation covered multiple sub-variants sharing a common body architecture but differing in shutter fitment, lens designation, and, in the case of the Y variant, finder quality.
The Yashicaflex C (Y variant) sits near the top of the Yashicaflex C hierarchy, offering the refined finder as its primary distinction. Within approximately two years, Yashica rationalised the entire Yashicaflex naming scheme into the simpler letter-series (Yashica A, B, C, D), with the Yashica-C (1956) effectively superseding the Yashicaflex C in the product line. The Yashicaflex C (Y variant) is accordingly a short-run, transitional model.
The Yashicaflex C (Y variant) is primarily of interest to collectors documenting the complete Yashicaflex sequence. It represents a late-stage attempt to push the Yashicaflex C's finder quality upward before the model family was retired in favour of the rationalised letter-series naming. The shift from Yashikor to Yashinon lens branding on this generation of cameras is also historically significant: Yashinon would carry Yashica's optical identity through the Mat 124G and into the 35mm SLR era of the 1970s.
For film shooters rather than collectors, the camera performs as any competent mid-1950s Japanese budget TLR: the Yashinon 80/3.5 is capable when stopped down to f/5.6 or f/8, the leaf shutter is quiet and vibration-free, and the 6x6 format delivers a useful negative area. The refined finder is a modest but genuine improvement in focus precision over the baseline Yashicaflex ground-glass.
C41
Kodak Portra 160 is a professional C-41 color negative film with fine grain, soft contrast, and natural color.
View profile →Yashica Yashicaflex C
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