Yashica to Unleash an ‘Unprecedented Camera’ Next Month

Starting in early August, the iconic Japanese camera brand Yashica began teasing a big “coming chapter” in its life. While some people dismissed it as hype for a new clip-on smartphone lens, it now appears it’s much more than that: Yashica is now teasing an “unprecedented camera.”

The company just released yet another enigmatic video (shown above), titled “The Prologue.” The only useful bits information contained in the video are two brief messages. The first reads “Expect the Unexpected: The Unprecedented Camera by YASHICA,” and the second states “October 2017, Kickstarter.”

So Yashica has a big camera announcement, and the brand is hoping to generate hype and raise enough money through crowdfunding to launch it.

With so many different types of cameras on the market now, from a new Polaroid instant camera to Light’s 16-camera camera, Yashica would need to step in a pretty unusual direction for this upcoming camera to actually be “unprecedented.”

It wouldn’t be the brand’s first time launching such an innovative product, though. Back in 1965, Yashica unveiled the Electro 35, a rangefinder that was the world’s first electronically controlled 35mm camera (its main function was an aperture priority Auto mode). That camera line went on to sell 8 million units.

We’ll know what Yashica has up its sleeve soon enough. If the product is as significant as these teasers make it seem, then we could be seeing the beginnings of Yashica’s return to the global photography stage.

(via Yashica via DPReview)