Yashica D or 124g?

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kabooi

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I have the option of buying a yashica D for £65 in excellent condition. Though my heart was set on the yashica 124g, and that has a light meter. Optically, they are the same though, right?
 
I had the D now I have the 124g and apart from the proper wind on lever on the 124g I preferred the D. In my opinion the images from the D were sharper and the colours were rendered more to my taste. The lightmeters on the 124g are getting on a bit now and I don't think they are particularly accurate so I use a light meter to double check. If the D is in really good condition, go for it, you can always trade up to a 124g later if you really think its worth it.

Andy
 
kabooi said:
I have the option of buying a yashica D for £65 in excellent condition. Though my heart was set on the yashica 124g, and that has a light meter. Optically, they are the same though, right?
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Hi, As far as I can remember they are optically the same so effectively they should give the same results. I'm fairly sure the D was just a cut down on frills version of the 124g.

I shouldn't be too concerned about having a built in meter though, You'd be better of using a seperate hand held meter.

Hope this helps.
 
I've had a D for years and have had some great photographs from it. Very solid and underrated camera.

There were two models of lens on the D. The early ones had the Yashikor 3 leaf 3.5, which I've got, and then Yashica started using a Yashinon 3.5 4 leaf lens. It appears there were also a few made with a Yashinon 2.8 which are like hen's teeth. You will hear lots of opinions comparing the two 3.5 optics but to be honest I can't see any difference (got the Yashinon in a Yashica Mat LM).
 
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Very surprised by some of the previous comments - the Yashikor lens models, which formed the vast majority of the lettered Yashica models, are generally considered inferior to any model with a Yashinon. I thought that was a generally held belief. That is not to say that they are bad lenses per se, just that the Yashinon is generally regarded to have better performance. The bokeh of the Yashikor is very characteristic (in keeping with 3 element triplet style lenses), but the Yashinon's is generally cleaner and more uniform, as you'd expect from a better lens.

The late Yashica D's are basically very similar to the slightly newer Yashica Mats, but the Yashica Mat had a winding crank, and the D's used a slower winding knob.

The D couldn't have been a cut down on frills version of the 124G at all - the D came out in 1958, but the 124G didn't hit the market till 1970. It may look like that in terms of features, but that's purely because the older camera really was just older.

At that sort of budget, I wouldn't be too hung up on a light meter. The 124G meter is probably one of the better inbuilt meters on TLRs, seeing as the selenium cells in the more expensive Rolleiflex models tend to be broken, but TLR shopping is generally easier without the light meter prerequisite.
 
freecom2 said:
Very surprised by some of the previous comments - the Yashikor lens models, which formed the vast majority of the lettered Yashica models, are generally considered inferior to any model with a Yashinon. I thought that was a generally held belief. That is not to say that they are bad lenses per se, just that the Yashinon is generally regarded to have better performance. The bokeh of the Yashikor is very characteristic (in keeping with 3 element triplet style lenses), but the Yashinon's is generally cleaner and more uniform, as you'd expect from a better lens.

The late Yashica D's are basically very similar to the slightly newer Yashica Mats, but the Yashica Mat had a winding crank, and the D's used a slower winding knob.

The D couldn't have been a cut down on frills version of the 124G at all - the D came out in 1958, but the 124G didn't hit the market till 1970. It may look like that in terms of features, but that's purely because the older camera really was just older.

At that sort of budget, I wouldn't be too hung up on a light meter. The 124G meter is probably one of the better inbuilt meters on TLRs, seeing as the selenium cells in the more expensive Rolleiflex models tend to be broken, but TLR shopping is generally easier without the light meter prerequisite.
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Very good and informative post.(y)
 
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