OK, so you've decided to email me. I used to have a nice conventional mailto: link on about a dozen pages that people could just click on. I pulled it for several reasons:

1. It was too easy for spambots* to find and harvest. Some days I get 6 or more spam messages and I'm convinced many of them are because I've had my email address here.
2. I don't have as much time to put into this as I used to.
   1. First of all, this is a page devoted to screw-mount Yashica SLRs from the 1960s and 70s. I don't know much of anything about:
      1. Rangefinders (try here)
      2. Newer SLRs like the FX-3 and afterward
      3. Movie cameras
      4. Other brands
   2. I can at least empathize with owners of TLRs since I now own a Yashicamat 124G, but I'm by no means an authority on them.
3. I started this site as a project for an HTML class I was taking back in 1998. The course is over, I got an A, but now I've got other things to do. I used to have a job that was boring and didn't pay very well but gave me free internet access, and time to answer emails and tinker with the site. I still have free internet access (I'm now a network administrator) but I have no time at work to deal with this site. I've spent many evenings at home answering emails and looking things up for people. I still enjoy that sometimes, but I am trying to get other things done as well.
4. I've kept this site up as a hobby. I consider it a resource and so, apparently, do 200 or 300 other people per week. It's not a business of any sort. I'm not losing any money by ignoring your email, because I'm not making any to begin with.

• I don't like rangefinders
  1. It's never made sense to me to be looking through a different lens than the one you're taking pictures through. It causes parallax in macro work, and it means that if you want to use a lens other than normal you'd better be bloody well sure that you've got one for the viewfinder that shows you the same thing the film sees.
  2. With an SLR it's fairly easy to adapt a monocular or telescope or microscope to it. Not a rangefinder.
  3. I've never owned a rangefinder other than for a few weeks after a friend gave me a couple, before I gave them back to him without ever putting film in one.
  4. So if you've got an Electro 35 or one of its variants (there were over 20 rangefinder models) I probably don't know much about it. If you're not sure whether it's a rangefinder or not, if it has a window in the front of any sort other than the main lens, it's a rangefinder. Still in doubt? Look on my rangefinder history page.
  5. Yes, I know, they're cheap, they're common, they're lighter weight than an SLR, and they're quieter. I don't care.
  6. There is a similar site for rangefinder fans.   Try the Yashica Guy
• About 40% of the mail I get is questions about rangefinders
• About 30% of the mail I get is about batteries (including for rangefinders). There are three basic questions:
  1. What kind of battery does my camera take?
     • (The obvious) Look at the old battery if you've got one. You can do some cross-referencing of numbers by looking at my battery dimensions page. There's more cross-referencing information in places like the Radio Sh ack catalog. Even if you can't find a readable number on it, try measuring its physical size, then looking at the dimensions page. Battery manufacturers did a pretty good job of sizing batteries so that if a battery fits the hole and makes contact, it's probably the right one.
     • Please take a look at Yashica's battery chart first. Admittedly they've dropped some of the older models off of it, but it's worth a look. There's no better authority.
     • I have batteries for most of the screw-mount SLRs listed here
     • If you don't have the old battery, try measuring the hole it fits into, then see my dimensions page.
  2. Is the original battery for my camera still being made?
     • Probably not! (but...)
     • In the era during which most of these cameras were made, the best batteries for the job were mercury batteries. They have a nearly constant voltage throughout most of their useful life, with a sudden dropoff at the end. Manufacturing them has also been banned in most countries for environmental reasons.
     • Common alternatives are alkaline and silver oxide. These work well enough, and fit with no modifications to the camera. Choose the silver oxide over the alkaline if you have a choice.
     • With the different materials come suffix letters on the battery numbers. A PX-32 (mercury) for instance, would be replaced by a PX-32A (alkaline) or a PX-32B.
  3. Where can I buy one?
     • Try local places first. With shipping costs being what they are, the shipping may well cost more than the battery itself.
     • Try your local Radio Shack
     • Try your local camera store (or maybe old-fashioned drug store)
     • There are a couple of reasonable mail-order places. There's Wholesale Advantage and photobattery.com. Photobattery.com at least advertises that they'll try to find out what battery your camera needs if you send them the camera's model number.
• About 20% of the mail I get is about manuals.
  • No, I don't have any for sale
  • No, I don't have any in electronic form that I can post or email (so far)
  • Here again, your best bet is to go to the source. Yashica has manuals and reprints for sale at around $7 for most models.
  • As an alternative, Craig Camera has quite a stock of them, but he gets $15-18 for them.
• 90% of the time I answer questions with no more information than I already have here on my site anyway. That's why it's here.

1. I may not answer if I don't actually have a good answer. Try posting your question to one of the rec.photo.* newsgroups
2. I do answer general questions about photography, but I probably won't answer questions specific to rangefinders.
3. All right, here it is. You figure out where to put the @ sign (maybe the robots won't): coreya at valinet.com
4. Please put the word Yashica in the subject line somewhere, so it stands out among the spam.