Sharp lens, great exposure meter, water resistant.

Superscope is EXTREMELY handy for candid shots, over your head shots, and camera on the ground shots.

Mine would choke on 36 exposure cartridges, even with new batteries.

On camera flash never seemed to do well in indoor shots.--

Shutter lag is BAD.

Feels really cheap and clunky.

Butt ugly in the black version (could be a strength, not sure).

I took lots of great pictures with mine--virtually all outdoors. Indoor performance is a bit dodgy with the flash. Well suited for a travel camera, not as well suited for catching quick snaps of your kids unless they are asleep (that !#$! shutter lag).

Customer Service

Never needed in 4 years of use.

Similar Products Used:

None

simple to use P&S, so long as you stick with small prints 4x6 inch and alike.

image quality not as good as one would expect from a zeiss lens.
no zoom, limited use of a fixed lens, wish it had a simple zoom range of 28 to 50 or something close to that, or a fixed 28 instead.
no where close to conventional 35mm SLR/rangefinder optics from either canon, nikon, minotla, or leica

If you really want to take good image quality snap shots and you are in a hurry and you don't have more than $140 to spend this might be a good camera for you. But if you are serious about your photographs, you wouldn't be in a hurry to create the shot, and if image quality is paramount then I recommend looking into the T4 older brother, the Contax TVSIII, it's only problem is cost, over a thousand dollars as of this post. The best all around P&S in my opinion is the Hexar by konica, middle of the ground price, fixed lens (if you like that sort of limitation) and excellant image quality combined with a near silent shutter.

Customer Service

N/A: never requried service, built better than most P&S I have seen on the market and ones my friends own.

Similar Products Used:

Leica M6, yes I know you cannot compare the two cameras, but it is the closest thing to a P&S that I have used. leica optics make this P&S look like plastic toy, but other wise it is a OK camera. But for the difference in price of a Leica m6 and asph 35/1.4 lens you could pay for a very good vacation to Tahiti.

Size,lightweight,good flash,easy controls,zeiss lens,

battery door hard to open,cheap lens cover,focusing not reliable,very bad vignetting of blue skies

Camera did not meet expectations so returned it. Overall the camera did not perform as well as expected despite all the hype. All the bad things said about it in reviews showed up. However, when the camera does focus well, the pictures are sharp. As one reviewer put it, "what's the use of the zeiss lens when the focusing is bad"

Customer Service

did not need

Similar Products Used:

Olympus Stylus Epic, Olympus Stylus,Konica Big Mini,Canon Snappy

The lens is the best feature of this camera. Nothing beats or come close to it, maybe the Contax T2...

Nothing.

Buy this camera. You won't regret it!!!

Similar Products Used:

Olympus XA
Contax T2

Incredible lens, very accurate metering system, infinity/exposure lock, waist-level viewfinder, splash proof.

Overly sensitive shutter release button. Resets exposure mode after every shot. External design does not look as cool as in other modern point-and-shoots.

This camera clearly stands out of the rest of other P&S cameras in $150-180 price range. I use T4 Super intensively with bith print and slide film and I am always amaized with the quality of pictures it produces. The camera is capable of sharpness/contrast and exposure accuracy, which rival my SLR gear. Besides some "weaknesses" I've mentioned above, I rate Yashica T5 as an outstanding point-and shoot camera.

Customer Service

none needed to date

Similar Products Used:

Olympus Epic, Contax TVS, bunch of other point-and-shoot cameras.

- Excellent sharp lens with very little flare.
- Easy, straight-forward use
(what else could you expect from a simple point-and-shoot...)

- Annoying shutter lag
- Simple, four-element non-asperical lens construction yields significantly reduced sharpness in image corners when aperture is wide-open,
so a fast film should be used at low-light conditions.
- Flimsy plastic body you would normally expect with a 50 $ camera, but not as a "home" for a Zeiss lens
- In most cases, the flash/distance settings return to the default setting after each exposure; should be more "sticky", at least until the
next power off/on cycle

Excellent lens inside an inadequate body with a painful lack of
control. I would have no problem spending up to twice the price
for the same lens in a more solid, say at least aluminium, body with aperture priority and exposure compensation. But now that the T5 has been discontinued, who cares anyway? Seems like good prime-lens compact cameras are dying out...

Customer Service

I have just return my T5 a few days ago in order to have it serviced or replaced, because
the lens increasingly tended to produce blurring on one side of the image--maybe the
lens has slightly tilted within the body and so has the focal plane?! Let's see what Yashica/Kyocera can do about that and in what time...

Similar Products Used:

None

Compact size and good feel in the hands. viewfinder on top for low shots is a unique featue. Color depth.

lack of zoom
pics could be sharper

Overall this is a good camera, but does not take tacky sharp pics worthy of Zeiss lens. I suspect the focus is not very accurate. That being said, at longer distances the crispyness is there. Color saturation is outstanding as well.

Customer Service

never used
good sales people at B&H

Similar Products Used:

canon owl (hated it)

THE LENS IS JUST OUTSTANDING.
SUPER SCOPE WORKS REALLY WELL.
SHUTTER SPEED UP TO 1/700

SMALL LAG. HOWEVER, IF YOU FOCUS 1ST, THEN TAKE A PICTURE. THEN THERE IS NO LAG ?????

USE MY NIKON F50 ALOT.PURCHASED THE YASICA T5 FOR MY SONS 2ND BIRTHDAY, CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR. EVERY SHOT CAME OUT PIN SHARP. IE, YOU COULD COUNT EVERY GREY HAIR IN MY FARTHER S HEAD.(REALLY THAT SHARP)USED KODAK 200 ROYAL GOLD.
WENT TO THE DOME BEFORE IT SHUT.USED MY F50 AND T5. AND COMPAIRED RESULTS. T5 WON HANDS DOWN.IT MUST BE THAT BEAUTIFUL LENS.

Customer Service

N/A

Similar Products Used:

OLYMPUS MU II. (too small)
OLYMPUS OM 2N
NIKON F50

Sharp Pictures, Great outdoors, Average indoors, Great Lens, passed the left out in the rain for two days with the lens cover open test--camera was full of water with melted emulsion inside, with nothing to lose, I rinsed it well with plain water and let it dry for about a week, put new battery in it and worked like a charm except the stains in the viewfinder.

Shutter lag, release can be a bit sensitive.

A great second camera for anyone serious about photography. Great for Travel and candid shots.

Customer Service

Never needed

Similar Products Used:

Olympus epic

Rugged. Light. Excellent lens. Precise AF with AF and AE lock. Self timer. Tripod socket. Multiple flash modes. Right angle finder (Super scope). Really fits into your shirt pocket and is weatherproof.

No compensation. No manual override of focus or exposure. Feels a litle plasticky. Will not accept filters.

You cannot buy any other P&S camera that offers better value for money than the Yashica T4 Super. The lens performs better than that of the Nikon 35Ti, Contax T2 and others. It as superb contrast, an excellent meter good enough for *slides* and a fast enough shutter to freeze action.

This camera has true shirt pocket size, and is fairly weatherproof. It probably won't survive a dunking, but I have used it in rain without any problems. Since the focus system is active, shooting through glass can fool the camera sometimes. I have dropped the camera from 6 feet on hard concrete about thrice now.... no problems other than scratches to the body.

This is one camera I feel confident in gifting to relatives or the wife... they are point and shooters, and blame cameras for bad photos: with the T4 Super, they don't get enough bad pictures to complain about.

The camera is offered in black and silver. If the silver gets scratched, it looks ugly, but scratches are almost invisible on the black body. When new, the silver body looks better.

My personal recommendation: Use Kodak Royal Gold 400 ASA with this camera. It allows the camera decent range and the grain and color is as good (if not better) than the usual consumer ASA 100 films.

This camera is $155 at B&H now, and that is money well spent.

Also, be sure to check out this site for a comprehensive review:

http://www.photo.net/photo/point-and-shoot

Customer Service

Not needed.

Similar Products Used:

Almose every P&S on the market.