The long-standing Yasicha brand is making a comeback with cameras like the City 100 and City 200. But according to a series of teasers, that’s just the start – and the Yashica City 300 compact camera will launch this June. But the description of the new camera in the latest installment in the teaser series is giving me pause – because it's all about digital zoom.
While the first teaser gave little away, the brand’s first glimpse of the Yashica City 300 did note a key feature: “A professional-grade sensor and cutting-edge image technology, the first of its kind on a digital camera in the world.” That early hint suggests that what will set the City 300 from the City 100 and City 200 is a more advanced sensor.
The latest teaser, however, offers a full view of the front of the upcoming camera, which has a look that reminds me of a Nineties compact film camera. The image of the camera is paired with a description, written like a dictionary definition, which starts out with “Engineered to preserve the world around you exactly as you see it.”
As smartphone snapshots become increasingly about computational photography and less about preserving what you actually see, this is a description that I can get behind. I think one of the reasons that compact cameras are making a comeback could be in part due to the overcolored, automatically edited shots that most smartphones capture today.
The teaser also reveals that the Yashica City 300 will, in fact, have optical image stabilization, which should help the camera stay sharp in limited lighting.
But what has me puzzled is the next line in the teaser, which is all about digital zoom: “The Crop-to-zoom captures a wide shot and digitally crops to focus on a specific area, simulating zoom without optical magnification.” To me, that line suggests that the Yashica City 300 won’t have any form of optical zoom.
The teaser tries to play up digital zoom as a feature but, in reality, it’s something that any digital camera can do, if not in the camera then after the fact with any photo editor.
Digital zoom just crops the image, which gets in closer but loses resolution and detail. Optical zoom, on the other hand, uses the lens components to zoom without losing resolution and is the far better option of the two types of zoom. The City 100 has a 3x zoom and the City 200 a 10x zoom, but the idea of the City 300 having no optical zoom is a bit disappointing.
But of course, there are plenty of compact cameras on the market that have no zoom and yet are flying off the shelves. Zoom lenses are harder to put on a larger sensor while keeping the camera size small. The Fujifilm X100VI doesn’t have zoom, and neither does the Ricoh GR III. The Leica D-Lux 8 and the Canon PowerShot V1 do, on the other hand, have optical zoom.
The Yashica City 300’s apparent lack of zoom won’t be an issue if the camera does have the larger sensor that the first teaser hinted at. The Yashica City 100 and City 200 are also more affordable models, so if the City 300 can mix a larger sensor with a small body and an affordable price, it could be a hit. Still, I don’t care for how the company is bragging about the crop-to-zoom feature like it’s a big deal when it’s just the opposite.
While Yashica has yet to release full details on the City 300, the teaser notes a June 2025 launch date.
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