I got my Yashica Mat 124G camera back in the year 2000, I think, a few months after I got my Olympus OM-1. I’m not very in to medium format then. I remembered, I just love her shape. Nothing fancy, just square and bulky. And I even don’t know how to use her. I think my dad gave this to me too, I don’t quite remember. I kept her safely in my cupboard for quite a long time, then in late 2001 I started to look at her and try to know her better.
I don’t know who to ask or where to find any information about her. I’m not quite familiar with the internet too back then (poor me..). and as far as I remembered, I just move to Bandung, a new city, new home, new friends, new everything and still getting to know anything about what’s there in Bandung. My new friends in high school didn’t know either, so not many help going on there.
Good for me, I know that she’s a medium format and it uses a 120 film. So one day I bought a few films to try it out. It took me a very long time to load the film haha.. until finally I can give it test drive. No metering again for this camera, so it’s just feeling and lots of luck then. It’s pretty hard to get used to hold her, how to crank the film, setting the speed and the aperture, focusing and then taking the shot with the image that you see in the viewfinder is going the other way around. After a few times then I get used to her until finally the shutter jammed somehow when the focus ring is set between 1,5 – 4 or 5 meters. I have to rotate it to infinite or to the closest focus distance to let the shutter closed. I wonder why?
My Yashica Mat 124G with the lens cap and the leather casing.
Then a few years later I met a great repairman who told me that it is very common for TLR (or maybe he said specifically Mat 124G. I don’t quite remember) to get those kind of problem with the shutter. He said that there’s corrosion with the spring somewhere in the part that connects the lens and the focusing mechanism. (I hope I get that right =)). So I decided to leave her with him to fix the problem and hoped that she’ll be healthy again.
A few months later I came by to the repairman’s house to take her for a walk.
I get disappointed..
He didn’t even touch her! He forgot he said.. Wow… I gave him a big smile and took her home. I’ll talk about him later, I’ll dedicate a posting about him.
A few years back I started to take her out again, with it’s condition. And I started to notice that I don’t have the lens cap for her. Then last year I think, I met this guy when I went to a place full of books. He got lots of vintage cameras in excellent conditions and almost all of it with its original leather casing (in great condition too), vintage light meters, flashes, lenses and he’s great in repairing his own cameras too. We talked a lot, then he gave me this lens cap for her, and I told him that I’ll exchange it with the parts that he needed for his Yashica MG-1. I had an MG-1, and it’s better to give it to him than just sitting there in my room since the lens is broken and it’s quite impossible to fix it.
I still have to fix her shutter problem and trying to find a replacement for my viewing mirror. Then she’ll be just fine.
