 Yo, what up, welcome back to another episode where I take a look at the Yashica T4 in Wildwood, New Jersey, a place no film photographer has ever shot before. Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Well, if you've never heard of the Yashica T4, this is your chance to redeem yourself, you fool. Back in the day, Yashica was once a revered film camera manufacturer making some high quality TLRs, SLRs, and even rangefinders. So what is Yashica up to these days? Well, let's just say that their best days are behind them. But today we're here to talk about one of the best cameras that Yashica ever made, the T4. At this point I've put a few rolls through this Yashica T4, so I'm gonna go ahead and pretend like I know what I'm talking about. The Yashica T4 is a 35mm point shoot camera. Point shoot cameras are kinda like disposable cameras, but generally a lot better quality and reusable. The Yashica T4 was aimed at a non-professional photography market and it was released in 1990, which was a very good year for wine, but I don't know sh** about wine. This camera compared to my Contax T2 has been more of my go anywhere do anything point shoot. It's the perfect travel companion. I brought this camera with me on my Route 66 trip back in April, and I usually have it on me when I go camping with a bunch of assholes that I know. Okay, let's take a closer look at the camera. It's pretty small. It's probably the smallest camera that I own. First up, the body itself is plastic and after using the Titanium Contax T2, sometimes I worry that this thing is gonna break pretty easily. Turns out that my fears aren't completely unfounded as you can see the camera is pretty taped up here, but more on that later. To turn the camera on, not sexually, just to get ready to use it, you just slide this little tab over and the lens should pop out. On the top of the camera here we have three buttons. The biggest button here is the shutter button, which you can half press, French press, and full press. Next to the LCD screen are your flash and self timer functions. The self timer works by holding the button down until the countdown begins, which is about 10 seconds long, so you'll have plenty of time to perfect that selfie angle. The closest that the Yashica T4 can focus is about a little over a foot, or 0.35 meters if you choose to live your life with that measuring system. The flash on this camera is on automatic by default, meaning it will natively fire if the camera detects that there isn't enough light in your scene. You can turn the flash off by hitting the flash button here three times after you turn the camera on. One, two, three. You should then see this night sky symbol. If you turn the camera off, it will not remember your flash settings, and you will have to redo it. I know, it's super annoying. Yashica, why can't you just make the damn camera remember settings? Apparently that features some technological marvel on par with building the Great Wall of China because most point shoots don't have it. Anyway, on the bottom of the camera here you have a rewind button. The camera will actually auto rewind your film for you once it detects that the end of the roll has been reached. This rewind button here is for you if for some reason you want to do that before the end of the roll. You also have a tripod socket here for all you psychopaths out there that use point shoots for long exposures. Loading the camera is actually pretty straightforward. The film goes on the right side of the camera. You unspool a little bit of it and you leave the tip of it just under this red line here in the take-up chamber. After closing the back, the camera should auto wind to frame one. I don't have any film in here, so it's frame zero at the moment. If you've looked up Yashica T4s in the past, you might be wondering why this one is green and red. And the answer is because this is the safari version of this camera. Honestly, I'm not sure why I have the safari version. I'm not really planning on going on any safaris anytime soon. So I guess I'm just a fake ass poser. Let's talk about the lens on this bad boy. Arguably one of the biggest reasons anyone plunges their precious gold doubloons into this camera. The lens is a Carl Zeiss 35mm f3.5. And if you start to get all tingly inside when you hear the name Zeiss, then you and me aren't so different. Zeiss lenses kind of have this reputation of being some of the highest quality and sharpest lenses available. And they feature the classic Zeiss pop, which apparently is just high micro contrast. Because of the Zeiss pop or the 3D rendering, a lot of photographers seek out Zeiss glass. And to have one on a 35mm point and shoot is pretty rare. So is this lens really as sharp as everyone says? Well, to be honest, I think it's a little overhyped, but point and shoot lenses are kind of quality to begin with. Compared to other point and shoot lenses, this lens is God tier. But compared to other 35mm lenses, it's okay. In my experience using this lens, there's still some artifacts like vignetting and lens coma. Or at least I think that's what it's called. The autofocus is pretty good. I haven't had any misses with it. Which is definitely more than I can say about the Contax T2. Inside the T4's viewfinder is a light that either goes green or red when you half press the shutter. Green means it's locked focus, red means try again loser. Inside the viewfinder, you also have a frame line, kind of. The frame line in the viewfinder is not centered and it's kind of sitting in the corner closest to the lens. I'm not super sure why that's the case. I'm guessing it's something to do with close focusing, but I don't really know. Anyway, Monica, Mayushika T4 and I went out to Wildwood, New Jersey so that we could have cake by the ocean. Except for the cake part. Well, actually there was ice cream cake, but I don't think that song literally means cake. But before we left, I needed a new hairdo. After all, this was going to be my hot Yushika T4 summer. All right, Monica, it's summer 2021. I need a fresh haircut. I was thinking sort of an early, early negative feedback. George Muncie kind of like, you know, a little bit longer on the top, that sort of thing. Yeah, I can do that. Yeah, it just feels like you're taking off my hair and I was kind of hoping for like a longer sort of thing. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. It just kind of feels like I don't have hair up here anymore. No, you do. Well, hold on, let me look in here. Yo, what the f***, Monica? I went with a more modern negative feedback look. I loaded up some Tri-X 400 into the camera because, as Billie Ocean once said, get out of my dreams and into my Yushika T4 or something like that. To be fair, I don't really dream about shooting Tri-X ever. I'm more of a T-Max girl myself. Handling the T4 is really not bad at all. It's perfect for stuffing in your pocket, in your backpack, or just making your girlfriend carry it for you. Yeah, so I don't really like Tri-X. I kind of think that it tries too hard. But yeah, for real, it's not my thing. Say wildwood. Wildwood. Good job. Now say potato. Potato. Good job. Why potato because I'm Irish? I will say the nice thing about the Yushika T4 is that you can hand it to any film photography noob, and they'll instantly know how to use it because it is so dumbed down. So I also wanted to point out that this camera is a little bit prone to light leaks. This copy here has the issue, and I've seen it in a few other cases online. My understanding is that around the lens here is a rubber gasket that will sometimes tear ever so slightly and create a tiny, tiny, tiny pinhole, which would be great for pinhole photography, but sh** for everything else. In most of the cases I've seen, the light leak really only manifests itself in the far corner of your image, so it's not really like a big deal to paint out or crop out if you need to. Apparently the shutter speeds on this thing range from 1 second to 1,700th of a second, but it's not like that's really gonna matter. It's an automatic camera. This is one thing in your life that you won't have any control over. Some sources online speculate that the Yushika T4 will prioritize slower shutter speeds over opening up the aperture more for more light. Additionally, this camera can read film stocks from 50 ISO all the way to 3,200 ISO, so chances are it'll have your back in whatever situation you're in. Anyway, like the predator ripping a spine out of someone's body, I ripped the triax out of the Yushika T4 and put in some Ektar 100. This camera takes a CR123A battery, which you can still find, so that's kinda nice. The camera will actually drain your battery pretty quickly if it's off or just not in use because for some reason this top LCD screen needs to be on to tell me that I don't have film in the camera. Yeah, I'm not sure why that's a thing, but it is. At sunset I took some photos of Monika looking for seashells and the results kinda look like an album cover for some indie band. But then the unthinkable happened. After getting ice cream wasted, I was getting back in the car and the Yushika T4 slid out of the case that it was in, crashing down on the pavement. The front half of the camera split open, exposing the inner workings. I quickly squeezed the frame of the camera back together so that I wouldn't get any light leaks. Luckily it seemed like the damages to the camera were mostly cosmetic, so I decided to stop f***ing around and to take matters into my own grown-ass man hands. The split shell I simply gaff-taped the crap out of because gaff-tape fixes everything for some reason. The light leak I placed another small, precisely cut piece of gaff-tape in the lens chamber to block the light from the pinhole. It's a band-aid over the bigger problem, but I don't know anything about disassembling cameras, much less complex point shoots. Plus that solenoid inside is just waiting for a chance to f*** your whole day up, and I want no part of that. So, while we're on the topic of bulls*** about this camera, what are some other downsides? For starters, simplicity means a lack of functionality. You can't choose your ISO, you can't choose your aperture, or your shutter speed, and you can't set focus. But chances are, you're buying a point shoot in the first place because thinking is hard, and you don't want to have to deal with that kind of annoying crap. If you're superficial and only buy cameras with awesome shutter sounds, I would not rank this up there as one of the best. It kind of sounds like two raccoons fighting over a peanut in the local dumpster that I hang out at. Additionally, you might want to avoid using re-spooled films in this camera. I did it once, and I'm never gonna go back. I shot some retro chrome in this camera, and the T4 just yanked the end of the roll straight out of the cartridge, because I guess it just lives for chaos. I shot retro chrome in the Contax T2, and I didn't have any issues, so I guess the T4 just doesn't know its own strength. There's also an inherent risk using these old 35mm point shoots. It's the E-word, electronic. Unfortunately, this camera falls under the same curse that all point shoots do. Chances are, if it breaks or stops working, it's done for. All film point shoots are one way, meaning once the electronic parts inside of them die, then that's probably it. On the bright side, historically, it seems like that probably won't happen for another 40 years or so, but there's always outliers. Most camera repair technicians won't actually fix these because they usually need to source parts from another camera body. So I guess just think of the Yashiki T4 as a precious Sparrow's Egg. If you drop it, it'd go bye-bye. This channel is just getting dumber and dumber. But if you don't want to be an outlier, join us in website Nirvana with today's sponsor, Squarespace. I'm sure you've been in this situation before. You've shot your role of film, gone through the rigorous scanning and editing process, but now what? What's the best way to exhibit all your work for the world to take it all in? Why not create a website with a photography portfolio highlighting your greatest hits? Creating an online platform for your work has never been easier with Squarespace's intuitive user interface. I have several portfolios hosted on my website and I design them through Squarespace because I'm not very technical when it comes to design and their custom templates made creating a professional looking website completely doable in almost no time at all. There are no plugins, patches, or downloads ever. Everything is constructed by you right in your web browser. Plus if you hit a snag, Squarespace has around the clock 24-7 customer support. So what are you waiting for? If you're ready to build a website, you can start a free trial today at squarespace.com. And if you use the code GRAINIEDAYS at checkout, you can get 10% off your first purchase. So is the Yashiki T4 worth it? Well, it depends. For me, as I grow older and saggier, I've started to realize that I crave a little bit more manual control with my cameras. Right off the bat, I wasn't really a big fan of the camera and I was contemplating releasing it back into the wild, but I don't know, the more I use it, the more it's kind of growing on me. Like I said before, I took this camera with me on a recent road trip I did across the United States via Route 66 and I was really happy with how a lot of the photos turned out. What about price? Well, I think the secret is out and these are starting to get kind of expensive. Not too long ago, maybe a year ago, I remember seeing listings for these at around $300, but now I think you'd be lucky to find one for less than $500. Again, it's really up to you if you want to pay that much for a camera that's this simple. Though, if you're trying to scratch that Contax T2 point and shoot itch, I imagine that this camera would certainly hold you over. Again, the lens on this camera is really the big ticket item. Anyway, that's it. Hopefully this video was helpful. I'll leave you with this parting wisdom. Red Velvet cake is actually chocolate cake and Scooby Doo's real name is Scooter. So we had In-N-Out and we just had Whataburger. Which one did you like more and why? Oh man, I mean In-N-Out is a staple, but Whataburger, if you want to eat in one meal, what you should eat in two days, Whataburger is where to go. Yeah, I feel like Whataburger had more choice and they f*** hard with spicy. They do and I appreciate that. I do appreciate that. It's like if you don't like In-N-Out spread that they put on everything, like their trademark spread, which is just Thousand Island, I think, with onions. Yeah, it's like Sexy Thousand Island, yeah. If you don't like that, then you're not gonna like In-N-Out as much as Whataburger.