Yasuhara
Yasuhara Co. Ltd. (安原製作所, Yasuhara Seisakusho) was a small Japanese company that between 1998 and 2004 produced two rangefinder cameras, the Leica-thread-mount T981 or Isshiki (一式) and the fixed-lens T012 or Akizuki (秋月).
Yasuhara was founded by Mr Yasuhara Shin (安原伸), who had previously worked for Kyocera, in November 1988. It described itself as "in scale, the world's smallest camera maker" (kibo-teki ni, sekai-saishō kamera mēkā). "Maker" here probably means "designer and marketer": most if not all of the company's products are believed to have been manufactured in China.
Yasuhara also produced a Yasuhara MC 50mm f:2.8 Leica thread mount lens.
The company's address was Komazawa 1–17–17, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo. It closed in February 2004, citing the unexpectedly fast reduction in the market for silver-based photography.
The company has since then reemerged and started focusing on lenses mainly for mirrorless digital cameras. As of 2016 a fisheye, macro lens have been released along with dedicated tripod mount for the fisheye. Most notably though is the release in 2015 of their remake of the lens from Kodak's Vest Pocket camera. Their lens is named Momo, meaning 100 in traditional japanese, in celebration of the Vest Pocket Kodak that first came out in 1912. The purpose of reviving this lens is the noted full aperture soft focus effects that Kodak had restricted by making the opening in the Vest Pocket cameras lens hood smaller than the actual lens.
Links
- Yasuhara's site (December 2003) as last saved by web.archive.org before the announcement of closure: mostly in Japanese (set your browser to Shift-JIS)
- Yasuhara's message about its closure (February 2004): in Japanese (set your browser to Shift-JIS)
- Yasuhara's farewell message (in Japanese)
- Wikipedia article (in Japanese)
- A visit to Yasuhara by Matsubara Atsushi at vividcar.com (in Japanese)
Further reading
- Article in Purejidento, March 1999
