Yashica’s turned back time to get inspiration for its latest camera, the Tank. It’s a pocketable little shooter that’s all about keeping things simple and letting you engage with your craft behind the lens.
This retro-styled compact camera harks back to the early days of the first digital cameras, with basic controls and functionality. They were of course limited in their capabilities by today’s standards, but in a lot of ways, that was probably a good thing. And for people who are tired of complex devices with endless menus, it might be just the thing to get back to carefree photography.
The big deal about the Tank is its small size: it’s under 4 inches (10 cm) long and weighs only 3.7 oz (105 g), making it easy to carry around for travel and street photography. The diminutive size and unassuming design should help you blend into the crowd when you’re shooting in public too.
Introducing the YASHICA Tank digicam #filmcamera #camera #filmphotography #photography
The 1/2.8-inch CMOS sensor captures JPEG stills scaling up to 36 megapixels, and video in 4K at 30 fps or even 1080p at 60 fps in MP4. You can apply any of 11 creative filters to change up the look of your shots in-camera.
There’s no viewfinder at the rear, so you’ll have to make do with he 3-inch LCD preview screen. However, this flips up 180 degrees so you can see yourself while vlogging or snapping a selfie, which is a nice touch.
Yashica
The lens is an autofocusing 4.05mm f/1.8 prime, which can focus from 0.1 meters to infinity, and digitally zoom up to 8x. Interestingly, Yashica’s product page describes the lens as f/2.3, but that’s likely a typo. The Tank supports microSD cards up to 256 GB, and includes an LED flash and an 800-mAh battery that charges via USB-C.
Yashica promises the Tank will deliver shots that “preserve a nostalgic photographic character.” You can see sample images from it below.
Yashica
The same could be said of some low-end smartphones too. What I’m more intrigued by with this model is the potential of an at-the-ready shooter that doesn’t draw attention. I imagine it won’t bog you down with the pursuit of a meticulously engineered capture like most modern gear does.
Coming in at US$102, the Tank could make for a nicely little impulse purchase to try on for size. It looks neat with its faux leather grip, and you can get it in sky blue, black, brown, or pink marshmallow.
Yashica
It’s less capable than Yashica’s $420 City 300 that shoots 50-megapixel RAW images with a larger sensor – but for folks who just don’t want to fuss over settings and don’t need really high fidelity output, that might be a good thing.
Retro cameras seem to be having a moment: from the tiny Kodak Charmera to this replica of a film roll that can shoot video, to Fujifilm’s Single-8 tribute, and this digital companion for your film camera that lives on your hot shoe.
Yashica
Check out the Tank on Yashica’s site, where it’s available to pre-order; expect yours to ship by the end of March.
