Tony and Chelsea Northrup try the digiFilm Yashica Y35 camera: A Kickstarter success but real-world flop

posted Monday, November 5, 2018 at 4:30 PM EDT

Last October, Yashica launched a Kickstarter project for a new digiFilm camera, the Yashica Y35. The product is weird, allowing (or rather, forcing) the user to install digital film canisters into the camera to allow you to use different digital filters. The Kickstarter was a smashing success, raising over a million dollars in very short order.

Tony and Chelsea Northrup recently tried out the Yashica Y35 camera and the title of their video alludes to their thoughts, “Worst $1,000,000 camera.” So, what makes it so bad? For starters, the Yashica Y35 borrows the name of the Japanese camera company, Yashica, which obviously has a certain legacy attached to it, a legacy not honored effectively by the Y35.

In the video below, you can watch Chelsea Northrup unbox the camera, discuss its design and build quality and capture images. As you can see, there are a lot of issues with the Yashica Y35 and it’s a shame that such a bad product is tarnishing the Yashica name. To quote Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, sometimes dead is better.