After disastrous try in 2018 and 2019, Yashika is now teasing with a new camera in 2022. In 2018, they tried with Y35, which received poor reviews. In 2019, Yashika launched 3 cameras on Kickstarter but did not do much with that either.
As spotted by Photo Rumors, Yashika has teased with a post on their Instagram account. In this post, Yashika teased about something to expect I 2022. They however did not reveal anything else on that.
Yashika has been one polarizing brand in photography. They did lot of damage to their own reputation in past. As a part of its relaunch strategy in 2017, Yashika declared that they are coming out with an “unprecedented camera” which will change the perception about cameras altogether. The camera was Y35. The Y35 was a digital camera with interchangeable digital film canisters. These canisters were pre-programmed with different ISO levels, aspect ratios and even color balances. The camera did not have any manual settings. To change settings, photographer was required to swap canisters
The kickstarter for Y35 was hugely successful. It was backed to almost $1,287,185 (approx. Rs. 9.65 Crore). Unfortunately, Yashika camera did not live up to the expectations and had many design flaws along with operational bugs.
Despite this huge setback, Yashika tried again in 2019 and announced their 3 cameras on kickstarter. Surprisingly they got the decent backing to the tune of $18,676 (approx. Rs. 14 Lac)
While Yashika is silent on details about this launch in 2022, we can only hope and pray that this time they really do some value addition to photography and photographers.