The first rangefinder I obtained when I came down with my case of GAS (Gear Acquistion Syndrome) last summer was the Yashica Lynx 1000. I snagged it for $40 from Facebook Marketplace. After I got it home, I learned that the aperature ring wasn’t functional. These days I’m more aware of how to check out these cameras for functionality before plopping down money on them.

I spent some more cash on the camera by having it serviced at a local camera shop, but they weren’t able to get it functional either. I put it on my shelf, and there it sat. Over the next few months I continued to aqcuire a number of additional cameras and use those instead.

Four months later I went back to the Lynx 1000 and loaded it with a roll of black and white film. The morning was super foggy and dreary. I headed out to snap some moody shots. It wasn’t until about half an hour into my photo excursion that I rememberered the camera wasn’t working properly. I’d completely forgotten that I’d left it on a shelf and unused for a reason. By this time I’d shot about half of the 36 exposure roll in a camera with a busted aperature ring. I knew the shots wouldn’t be properly exposed and there was no point in continuing with that camera. I aborted this camera mission and rewound the film. I later loaded it back into a different Lynx. This time, it was a Yashica Lynx 5000E which I’d obtained just a few weeks earlier from eBay.

In full disclosure, I’ve also obtained another 5000E and a Lynx 5000, bringing my total number of Yashica Lynx rangerfinders to four. Confused? Yeah, me too. That’s what I attribute to me using the non-functional Lynx 1000 on a doomed photowalk. Let me break it down:

Yashica Lynx 1000 obtained 08/2024 from Facebook Marketplace for $40.00.
Yashica Lynx 5000 obtained 09/2024 from eBay for $65.89.
Yashica Lynx 5000E obtained 11/2024 from eBay for a ridiculous $6.00.
Yashica Lynx 5000E obtained 12/2024 from eBay for a paltry $37.50.

That’s a total of less than $150 for all four and an average of just $37.35 per camera. Only the Lynx 1000 is unusable at the moment. Despite the repair shop failing to resurrect it, I’m researching how to make repairs on my own to hopefully bring it back into service. It’ll be good practice on a camera that isn’t worth a whole lot, so the stakes are small.

Back to the roll of film. It was a roll of Ilford HP5+ 400. After essentially wasting the first half of the roll, it was put into the Lynx I’d grabbed for $37.50. I decided to push it to 800 speed instead of rating it at box speed.

A few of the shots were of my girlfriend’s daughter at her college graduation. Besides those, I expected any of the other surviving shots to be throwaways. But I’m always eager to see how film turns out. I developed in Kodak D-76 1:1 for 16:30 minutes at the usual 68°. Or, at least it started out at 68°. With that long of a development time it surely crept up a few degrees. I agitated for the first full minute then for ten seconds every minute after that. I’m attributing the higher than normal contrast to that full first minute of agitation. But I thought the 400 ISO film performed quite well pushed to 800.