Yashica t4 in 2025
One month ago, I put the Olympus AF-1 Twin, a humble point and shoot, up against the Leica M4-P. The result? Surprisingly close. But even after that shoot, one camera surprised me even more: the Yashica T4.
Before I got hooked on film, I was deep into Fujifilm’s digital cameras. I loved the tactile dials, the manual control and with the Ansel Adams Zone System, I felt like I had finally figured out how I wanted to shoot. I thought… this is it.
But over time, I started moving toward a simpler path. RAW files gave way to JPEGs, manual exposure became aperture priority, and eventually, I sold all my digital gear, except one. The Ricoh GR IIIx (Bae’s cam) stayed with me. It’s small, fast, and perfect for point and shoot style work.
On a recent Photobreak walk, Thomas and I were still thinking about the Olympus AF-1 Twin. We both agreed: the ease of use and the quality of the images it produced made it feel like a top tier camera, even if it didn’t look the part.
Thomas smiled and said, “There’s a camera for sale right now on kamerastore.com. You’ll love it — the Yashica T5.”
After the walk, I started doing my research. I quickly realized the T5 is rarely available and, when it is, it’s super expensive. Still, I checked kamerastore.com just to see the price… and it was already gone. Sold out.
Usually, I’m okay with things not going my way. Deep down, I believe everything happens for a reason, you know, stars aligning and all that. So I went to bed. The next morning, I woke up and the internet was happening.
Because I’d been reading about the T5 the night before, the algorithm kicked in. Suddenly, my feed was full of Yashica content. Yashicasitas everywhere.
Two weeks later, I had the T4 in hand (close enough! Thanks Thomas) and was already halfway through my first roll. As you’ll see in the video below, we documented that shoot and had another great photowalk, this time with the Yashica T4.
The camera is stripped down to the essentials. No exposure compensation, all auto focus, auto rewind. You can pick a flash setting, or use infinity focus mode (great for shooting through glass), but that’s basically it.
Which is just how I wanted it.
Well, almost.
There’s one little thing: the half press.
This is partly on me, something I just had to get used to. When you half press the shutter, a green light means the camera has locked focus, red means flash is needed, and a blinking green means focus failed.
All good so far. The issue is that the half press doesn’t have a clear resting point. It’s very easy to accidentally take a shot before you’re ready. I missed a few frames this way.
But by the end of the first roll, I’d already developed a feel for it.
Of course, we also talked gear on the photowalk. The big question: is something like the T4, now very expensive, really worth it? At that point, we hadn’t seen any images yet and were going purely on feel.
It reminds me a lot of the Ricoh GR series, compact, quiet, and discreet. You can power it up quickly and go full ninja mode. I love that, especially when shooting street photography.
The shoot itself felt okay. I didn’t think I had any bangers, but I was really curious to see the results, so I started developing as soon as I got home.
This time I developed the roll manually (a future blog post is coming on that), and the process introduced some funky color casts. But looking past that…
Geeez (!)
What a camera. Even with my quick, imperfect shooting, I maybe missed focus on one or two shots. The Zeiss lens is incredibly sharp. The images don’t look anything like what the Olympus AF-1 Twin gave me, this is something different.
This has the depth and rendering of, dare I say it, a Leica with a Voigtländer lens.
Surprised(!)
*I got 37 frames out of my first roll.
