The Yashica Minister II Manual open with the following:-
“This is your Yashica – A precision instrument capable of bringing you some of the finest photographs you have ever taken.”
Understandably I was excited at the prospect of using my Minister II.
It is, in my opinion, an attractive looking viewfinder camera that feels substantial in the hand.
Looking at the top plate we can see the Light Value Scale that allows us to determine the correct aperture for any given scene.
This is calibrated to the film speed of the film by rotating the upper most dial on the back of the camera in the middle, as seen in the image below.
Then this is manually transferred to the outer most dial on the fixed 435mm f2.8 lens. The lens aperture and shutter are now fixed and any combination can be selected by rotating the the gnarled dial that sits between the shutter and aperture dials, reassured that the images will be correctly exposed.
Sadly that was not my experience. The cameras shutter seemed to worked when I first purchased the camera. However when I developed a roll of Fomapan 200 during a walk around the Yorkshire town of Marsden, to my disappointment most of the images were blurred. The only images that were worth showing are the ones below.
On later inspection it seems the Copal SVL shutter has bulb as its only operation. So I will have to perform an open Shutter operation to see if I can solve the problem. I think it will be worth it as I really enjoyed using the camera. To be continued……
arhphotographic 