Whatever next. The Yashica Kickstarter project by to fund the new Y35 digiFilm camera takes the biscuit. Who, I wonder, will be interested in this contrived piece of nonsense. Whoever they are, they’ve put up over 1m US dollars. Amazing.
I’ll let the robot take over the description:
So now you are fully aware of the USPs of this pointless little pointer. It’s a digital camera with a rewind lever and spoof film cassettes which appear to set up the camera for different modes. The act of changing cassettes is suppose to bring back the excitement of the film era. Most cameras have a dial on the top plate to achieve the same thing.
There’s only one possibly good thing about this: The rewind lever. I’ve often thought that a rewind lever to set up the next shot could be an interesting opportunity to make us think between our masterpieces. It would also avoid inadvertent waking and random shooting should you put the camera back in the bag without switching it off.
Shades of ill-fated Epson R-D1, but that’s probably why no one else has tried it. I still think it is a good idea. The rest of the Y35 can best be described as ill-fated in its entirety. I shall not be kickstarting, even though funding appears to have reached 8.7m Hong Kong dollars. Why? The mind boggles. It is so pointless it might just succeed.
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Hi there Mike. Long time no speak. I’m still waiting for that Kickstarter project that you promoted on here 2+ years ago (to digitise a Leica M3) to come to fruition. My first and last Kickstarter investment. I can only assume that he drank the proceedings down at the student union!
Treve, good to hear from you. The M3 conversion sounded good at the time but, in retrospect, it was a lost cause. It’s the main reason I now try to avoid writing about crowd-funding projects. Mind you, I was surprised that a name such as Yashica (assuming it is not someone who just bought the name) should use Kickstarter. If it goes belly up that’s a lot of drinks at the student union in Hong Kong.
I think the future would be much brighter for this camera had they gone with the idea of resurrecting the RD-1….. to the greatest extent possible. Had that been the case, I would be in line for one.
So would I!
I am convinced Mike, that suave and skilful delivery featured in their YouTube advertising, they have even employed a real voice synthesiser.
I think that I would rather buy an Electro 35, which incidentally was my first camera, and I nearly bought one in immaculate order from our local hospice shop a few weeks back £20, it was only because at that point I had just bought the "Brownie" and the XA4, both of which are probably better than the featured effort.
Gday Mike.
Its the tiny sensor as much as anything that would keep me away. Oh, and how can anyone pledge money up front with no knowledge whatsoever of the lens quality?
But Fuji (and others) have shown that ‘retro’ is all the rage. This is just tapping into that.
Gday to you too Jason! I agree. My main beef with this camera is the ridiculous cassette system which is wholly contrived and totally unnecessary. But it seems to have pressed the right buttons to make people contribute.