The battle of the P&S - Yashica T5 vs Nikon L35AF

As I've said to a previous post, I always had the impression that the Nikon L35AF was performing just as well as the Yashica T4/T5 and was costing only 1/10 of it's price. I never had though both cameras at the same time to put them to a test. That was until a month ago when I came across a Yashica T5. I thought I could try to compare the two cameras and see if my gut feeling is right.

• The test

Now, let's think of the limitations of a comparison test like this. My idea was to load the Yashica T5 with a Kodak Tri-X, shoot three pictures, remove it put it on the Nikon, take exactly the same 3 pics and then remove it and put it on my Zenit 12XP and shoot the same three pics with the Takumar 35 f/2. No proper resolution test would be ever complete without the mandatory newspapers-hanging-on-walls test.

Picture of the setting.

 The cameras where mounted on tripod for this shots and hand held for the shots of the neighbour's roof. Shooting with point and shoot cameras means that we have no control over the chosen aperture that can have an effect on the picture quality. So if one camera took the picture on f3.5 and the other on f/5.6 then obviously the later one will record more detail. But since I cannot control this, I will post the results as captured by the cameras. The film was developed in Rodinal and scanned on an Epson V200 scanner using Vuescan at 4800 dpi and save the pictures as raw TIFF. Things unfortunately did not go as planned, it seems that the Zenit's slow speeds were sticky so the newspaper picture taken with the Takumar was grossly overexposed to the point that it was of no use for the test. The roof picture taken with the Takumar was at f/22 and 1/500 which means that refraction already started kicking in. I desperately need a new M42 camera....

• The results.

First of all let's see how the two cameras perform at the edge of the frame.  My expectation was that the Yashica will perform noticeably better as the Nikon has a reputation for vignetting at the edges which i thought that it might influence it. Here are the 100% crops from the originals.

 

It is difficult to say which camera performs better - If I really have to choose I would say that the Yashica T5 is a bit better but the difference is minimal.
Let's see how they perform on the centre. Here are the 100% crops.

 

Although both cameras perform very similar, I think that the Nikon has the edge on the centre.

• Vignetting

In terms of vignetting, it seems that Yashica's Carl Zeiss lens performs a bit better as there seems to be a hint of vignetting with the Nikon. Because of the brightness of the scene, i would imagine that both cameras shot around f/11-f/16.

Centre resolution is very similar for all three lenses but it does seem to me that the Nikon records better details at the edge in this picture than the Yashica. A very pleasant surprise is how well they did compared to the Takumar which unfortunately had to shoot at f/22 and 1/500 due to the Zenit's limited speed range (a 1/1000 would have been ideal)

Conclusion

This unscientific comparison proved to me what I always had the gut feeling about. The Nikon L35AF is as a sharp shooter as the Yashica T4 / T5 is if not sharper. The Nikon is as sharp at the edge as the Yashica (if not sharper at times) while at the centre, Nikon seemed (to me at least) to have the edge in terms of resolution. The Nikon comes with a handy 46mm filter thread which means that filters and lens hood can be used. On the other hand Yashica is a much smaller camera and can fit in your shirt's pocket and carry it always with you unlike the Nikon which feels like a supersized compact but which (at least for me) is better to hold and shoot.Both cameras produced excellent results, very close to the one the Takumar produced, although as I said, the Takumar was shot with an f/22 aperture.

With a price tag of £100+ for the Yashica, it is no brainer to me as to which one to sell and which one to keep.