It seems like there’s always some drama when I shoot with a medium format camera. I bought my Yashica Mat-124G as a replacement for my non-functional Flexaret Automat.
I had been out twice with the Yashica and had decent success. The first roll looked a little hazy. Before going out with a second roll, I cleaned the lens which seemed to help a bit although the images weren’t as sharp as anything I got from the Flexaret.
I used color film for those first two rolls so I decided to see what black and white photos would look like with it. I had a roll of Ilford XPS Super handy so decided to load that. I had a little trouble loading it, particularly in ensuring that it was in straight.
Holly and I went out for one of our usual neighborhood walks. I took one photo but then was unable to advance it.
Since I knew I had trouble loading it, I thought that that could have been the issue.
Back at home, I went into our bathroom with the lights off, opened the back, and tried to get the film to advance by guiding it with my fingers. It seemed to work. In the process, I lost a few photos but was able to shoot the rest of the roll and ended up with 8 photos that turned out.
This is the first photo I took before the problem advancing.
Here are a couple of photos in our apartment that I took to test the camera after I tried fixing the roll.
I took the rest during a walk around Rittenhouse Square.
After the problems I’ve had with my medium format cameras, I was certainly glad the issue was caused by some clumsy loading of the film. Despite those problems, I really like medium format photography and am hoping to get more millage out of the Yashica Mat 124-G than I got from either my Flexaret or my Pentacon Six.
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