Yashica Samurai1987

History

Kyocera Corporation (which owned the Yashica brand from 1983) developed the Samurai as a consumer product capitalising on the camcorder craze of the late 1980s. Home video cameras — JVC, Sony, Panasonic — had popularised a vertical-grip, horizontal-operation ergonomic, and the Samurai applied it to a still camera. Marketing positioned it as a "video-camera look" for young consumers who wanted to appear current.

The half-frame format was a natural fit: holding the camera in portrait orientation produces portrait-oriented prints automatically, without rotating the camera, and the double frame count (72 from 36) made it economical for casual shooting.

The Samurai X3.0 was the main production model; the X4.0 followed with a longer zoom. Yashica also produced a Super Samurai variant with a higher maximum ISO sensitivity. The line was discontinued around 1992 as consumer tastes shifted and the novelty aesthetic faded.

Why It Matters

The Samurai is a peculiar artefact of 1980s consumer electronics culture — the only major production half-frame camera to use a camcorder-style portrait-grip format. Its design has no direct antecedents and no successors; no other company produced a comparable half-frame camera in the same ergonomic idiom.

For collectors of unusual film cameras, the Samurai occupies a niche as a conversation piece and as a functional shooter. The 72-frame count and built-in zoom make it surprisingly capable as a travel camera, and the portrait-orientation format is useful for photographing people without rotating the camera.

Lenses & Accessories

Lens is fixed (zoom, non-interchangeable). No accessories beyond strap and case. Film: any standard 35mm DX-coded cassette from ISO 50 to 1600.

Sample Photographers / Notable Use

• The Samurai was primarily a consumer novelty camera, not widely adopted by serious photographers.
• Japanese fashion photographers occasionally used the Samurai for its unique portrait-vertical orientation in editorial contexts.
• The camera's camcorder aesthetic made it appear in period Japanese advertising and pop-culture imagery of the late 1980s.

References

• Camera-Wiki: Yashica Samurai
• Wikipedia: Yashica Samurai

Kodak UltraMax 400 is a versatile consumer-grade ISO 400 daylight-balanced color negative film with T-grain emulsion, delivering warm Kodak colors, fine-for-speed grain (PGI 46), and wide exposure latitude. Currently in production and available globally as a single-roll and multi-pack.