The Film Retriever

 Another camera that can be found littering car boot sales and charity shops, the EOS 500 was one of those cameras that I never thought i would end up buying mostly due to their prices going around £15-£20 which I wasn't sure I wanted to pay. I had already the EOS 300V which is a newer camera and it didn't seem to me that the EOS 500 could satisfy any user's need. Got this one for £2.50 and it is in great condition though... what the hell, i usually spend this amount of money for a sandwich and coke.   The EOS 500 was the very successful successor of the already very successful EOS 1000FN, a consumer grade camera that placed Canon on the top of the sales in the very lucrative category of consumers AF SLRs. The EOS 1000FN was almost revolutionary back at its time if you consider its small dimensions (which are not very small if you see it today) and it sold like hot cross buns on Great Friday before it was replaced by the EOS 500 that i am ...

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. Shoo...

Those who have read already my review on the Yashica T4, then this review has nothing more to add. The Yashica T5 is pretty much a T4 with some aesthetic changes and the addition of a waist level viewfinder. Other than that, everything else remains the same. More importantly, the lens remains the same Carl Zeiss Tessar T* 35mm f/3.5. Now, having had 8 cameras of Yashica's T-series ( two T3's, three T4's, one T5 and two T-Zoom's) I can write my overall impression of using these cameras. For me, the T3 cameras where not up there with the rest of the series. Picture quality-wise the T3's were in the same league with the T-zoom (high praise for the T-zoom really). The ones to go for are the T4/T5 ones.They feel like a real improvement over the T3. T-Zoom is a nice compact but you need to have fast films and sunshine to appreciate the lens' performance. With two of my T4 samples i had problems around inconsistent focusing which completely annihi...

Now... what is wrong with the picture on the left? You guessed it right. Newer SMC Takumars SHOULD NOT be mounted on Zenits. Why? The extra pin that controls the Auto/Manual switch gets stuck on the screw holes on the mount. If you did this mistake -like i did - then you have two options. a) You force the  lens to unscrew bending the pin and damaging the lens or b) unscrew the whole thing and reach the pin from the inside. In my case, the lens is a Super Takumar 35mm f/2. Other lenses will of course be different to dismantle. Now.... ************************* Please read ******************** Since in this bad world, there are people who try to make a living out of suing others, please read this carefully. I am not a technician and neither do I claim to be one. If you decide to follow the guide below, you do it at your own risk and I will assume no responsibility if you damage your lens. You are a big boy/girl to decide for your self. If you think you cannot do it, then don't...