Yashica's bid for popularity was primarily grounded in the massive 45mm f/1.4 lens with seven elements in five groups. The camera was very well constructed and it also had a number of other features that made it competitive at that point. The CdS light meter was coupled to the aperture and shutter. The viewfinder had auto-parallax correction with the bright line frame moving as you focused.
My example is very well preserved, with no dents or scratches, and all the controls work very smoothly. The shutter is quiet and seems accurate at all speeds. The light meter is reactive to light, but does not read correctly. The meter is adjustable by disassembling the lens, so it could likely be restored to proper operation.
The viewfinder is adequately bright, but the focus patch is small and lacks contrast. When I got mine, I put a piece of reddish color film leader in front of the viewfinder window, and that did improve contrast somewhat. When I took the camera on this last outing to Old Town Albuquerque I left the red film in front of the viewfinder, but I decided by the time the roll of film was used up that the slight improvement in contrast was not a good trade for the dimmer image in the viewfinder.
In reading online sources about the Lynx-14 it seems that even when the camera was new the rangefinder patch may have been insufficiently contrasty to use the camera effectively in the low-light situations for which the camera was designed. A bigger focus patch or a viewfinder diopter would have been nice additions.
Low light issues aside, the big Yashinon-DX lens is very sharp and contrasty and it can produce very pleasing images. The f/1.4 aperture and the auto-parallax correction offer the possibility of exploring the potential of images with very limited depth of focus.
4 comments:
I have a 14e that I don't use much. Your images show how good the lens is. I am never disappointed with the images I get from mine. But it's so large and heavy! Mine also has a meter that isn't quite right, although under most circumstances if you add one stop of exposure you'll be fine. I keep meaning to send it to Mark Hama while I still can.
It is nice when all the parts work properly. I generally don't worry about on-board meters much as long as manual operation is available. It would be interesting to track down someone who used the Lynx when it was new, and get some impression about how well suited it was to low light work.
Nice. I wonder if any company remounts this lens with a Leica thread or M mount?
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