The internet is dangerous. Blogs are dangerous. They make me want new cameras. I think I have a problem. A vintage camera addiction problem. Last week I was reading Eric Kim’s Street Photography Blog and was introduced to the Yashica Electro 35 when he recommended it for street photography. I love street photography but I am also really bad at it. I’m not the kind of person who can stand just a few feet away and obviously take a picture of a stranger. That being said, I didn’t have a camera good for street photography. You want something discrete. My Yashica Mat LM draws way too much attention… it’s too pretty for its own good. Rangefinders, like the Electro, seem to be popular with film street photographers. I got a Petri Racer rangefinder about a year ago but it is awkward to use and likes to rip film. I only shot two rolls with it and put it away on a shelf. I bought a Yashica Electro 35 GSN on Ebay and it arrived on Monday. I was in love with it even before I processed the film. If it had any problems I would have bought another one but luckily the film came out fine. It is a little weird shooting an automatic camera and giving up control. I feel like I’m cheating.
For my test roll I only had Delta 100. I’ve never worked with this film before. I’m so used to pushing film that I didn’t bother checking how this particular film responded. After shooting it at 400 I googled development times and found out no one recommends pushing it. So I just have to say…I pushed Delta 100 to 400 and everyone survived! Will I do it again? Probably not. I always use the Massive Development Chart to get my development times and it hasn’t led me wrong yet. It listed a 23 minuted development with one inversion every 30 seconds. I like developing film but this sounded horrible so I went the lazy way and decided to stand develop. I have heard that you can push film using stand development but I never really trusted it and so never tried it. Luckily it came out okay. Here are some shots from the test roll….
Details: Yashica Electro 35 GSN, Ilford Delta 100 @ 400, Fomadon R09 1:100 1 hr semi-stand
Delilah Photography 
Yes, the Internet and — more importantly — eBay are dangerous places to see what some of these old cameras look like (Mint condition? And for that little — are you kidding me?).
Your shots on your test roll came out looking beautiful!
thanks! I’m going to try to stay away from ebay for a while