Yashica TL Electro X & Fomapan T200

One good Yashica deserves another. After picking up my Yashica TL, I started searching for a black version of their 35mm cameras -my favorite color scheme.


This one is in EX- condition. Typical of cameras this old the only thing that doesn't work is the meter. Whereas the meter in my Yashica TL is completely dead, this meter will wiggle a tad if pointed into bright light, but that's about it.


The TL Electro X has more robust features than the strait TL model. It has a 50mm f1.7 lens which is crisp and clear of any abnormalities. The shutter speed max is 1/1000th, there is a mirror lockup, cable release, flash sync on the hot shoe and PC port. The maximum ISO is still 800 like the TL.

Just as with the TL, this one feels very right in the hands. It's a nice solid camera that can be depended on. Below is a photograph taken on the first roll of film I put through this beauty. The photograph itself is I think a little less than what this camera can do, but that is only because the film was developed in Caffenol C-L. In fairness to Caffenol, I am still building a curve for this developer. More on Caffenol later.



The film I used for this photograph was Fomapan T200 35mm. This is another film that I scooped up several 100' rolls of. This emulsion is much different than Foma's 100 and 400 speed films. The crystal formations are very unique and give this film a lot of latitude in exposure, and this is why I chose it for my second Caffenol experiment. I will up front concede that I am still learning how to formulate my Caffenol to match the films and speeds that I use. This particular photograph was exposed at EI400, a one stop push. The tones rendered were nice, but I will need to work on sharpness. This film is capable of being incredibly sharp in commercial developers, so I believe the lack of sharpness has everything to do with my particular Caffenol formula used with this film. The formulation I used is below.

Yashica TL Electro X
Fomapan T200 @ EI400
Caffenol C-L
500ml distilled water
30g Sodium Carbonate
8g Ascorbic Acid
500mg Potassium Bromide
20g Folgers instant coffee

15 minute dev time at 21c
Standard agitation schedule