Yashica FX-D S300 review: this retro-styled compact camera aims to give you the choice of an analog or digital shooting experience

We’re nearly 50 years down the line since the launch of the epic and properly robust Yashica FX-3 35mm film camera. Something of a legend in its own lifetime, the camera has been (kind of) reborn for the digital age, in the shape of this plastic fantastic Yashica FX-D S300. The new kid on the block isn’t a Japanese camera made by Yashica as such, more of a Chinese offering from a company paying to use the name.

While the Yashica FX-D S300 is undeniably a digital camera, its beating heart is a 1/1.56-inch image sensor, more typical of those found in recent mobile phones. And while it’s a digital camera, it’s dressed up more like a film camera in a party frock. Retro finery includes various control dials, a viewfinder cowl with an actual viewfinder built into it (unlike the similar but empty cowls of the sibling FX-D 100 and FX-D 300), a threaded circular shutter release button and even a ‘film advance lever’. The camera doesn’t take any actual film, ‘film simulation’ modes being as close at it gets.

The upshot is that the camera seeks to give you the choice of a regular ‘digital’ shooting style, or something more akin to shooting with an old film camera in ‘analog’ mode. Either way, it aims to be one of the best retro cameras on the market, as well as one of the best cheap cameras you can buy, although it’s really not particularly ‘cheap’.

Yashica FX-D S300: Specifications

Yashica FX-D S300: Price

The Yashica FX-D S300 currently sits at the top of the FX-D range. The range itself kicks off with the FX-D100 at $359 / £259 / AU$557, which is based on a physically smaller and lower-resolution 13MP image sensor, and lacks a viewfinder. Next up is the FX-D 300 which has the same ‘50MP’ image sensor as the S300 model but again lacks a viewfinder, costing $445 / £389 / AU$852. The top-end FX-D S300 that I’m reviewing here is currently the only one in the series that features a viewfinder and is unsurprisingly the most expensive, at $569 / £479 / AU$ TBA. Suffice it to say that this certainly isn’t a ‘cheap’ camera but is nevertheless one of the more affordable digital compacts on the market.

Yashica FX-D S300: Design & Handling

It’s all too easy to get snap-happy with digital cameras. Why take a photo when you can take half a dozen instead? Most of us end up with way more images than we know what to do with, then spend half an eternity culling them to more manageable quantities. One of the big things about the little FX-D S300 is that it aims to give you the option of slowing everything down to a more analog pace. But more on that later. From the back of the camera, it looks pretty standard fare with the usual 4-way pad and a sprinkling of other buttons, although there’s an arguably analog film simulations / filter effects button at the top left.

Around the front of the camera there’s a switch for regular ‘single’ autofocus mode or continuous ‘real time autofocus’ tracking. That’s just off to the side of the fixed focal length lens, which has an effective 24mm wide-angle perspective in full-frame equivalence, along with a fast f/1.8 aperture rating. One thing that strikes me is that the front element of the lens is very small, but there’s a relatively huge-diameter clear plastic disc covering it. To my mind, this doesn’t need to be included and simply adds to the risk of ghosting and flare.

Up on top, there’s more of a mix of new and old styling. As shown from left to right in the image below, there’s a rotary control dial for stepping through the various filter effects when you’re shooting in ‘digital’ mode, or through the available film simulations when you’re in ‘analog’ mode.

There’s a hot-shoe in the middle for attaching a universal flashgun – there’s no dedicated option as the shoe only has a single firing pin. Just to the right of this is a shooting mode dial that includes the likes of Full auto, Program, Shutter-priority and no less than four Custom settings. There are also nine scene modes on offer. Going full retro, there’s a round shutter-release button on the right with a threaded hole in the top, and that ‘film advance lever’ that I mentioned earlier.

Swapping from ‘digital’ to ‘analog’ shooting style simply involves pulling out the ‘film advance lever’. It stays slightly pulled back, as shown in the image below, and you’re now shooting film, or at least the digital equivalent of it.

From a handling perspective, that whole retro experience of slowing things down and taking it easy is based on the fact that you can only take a single shot, after which it’s displayed on the rear screen. You can’t take another shot unless you physically rotate the ‘film advance lever’ in readiness for the next frame. It works as advertised and does slow down the process, at least as long as you don’t take into account film cameras that had autowinders and motor-drives.

Not just a pretty interface, the ‘analog’ shooting mode comes complete with a set of film simulation options. I’m more familiar with this kind of thing in Fujifilm digital cameras, which is fair enough as the company has a big back catalog of film stock. Yashica isn’t known for manufacturing film but nevertheless, the camera features film simulations including Ruby 60s for soft and nostalgic warmth, Sapphire 70s for cool tones, classic Yashica 400 for portraiture, Golden 80s for a sun-soaked look, and finally Mono 400 and B&W 400 for alternative retro black & white styles.

Definitely digital features include built-in Wi-Fi and a USB-C port, and there’s also a socket for attaching an external microphone. The USB-C port can be used not only for a data link but also for recharging the removable Li-ion battery. The port and mic socket are stashed away behind a flap on the left hand side of the camera.

Getting back to that fixed focal length lens, the FX-D S300 doesn’t have an optical zoom lens like the FX-D 100. As such, digital zoom is applied and in regular JPEG capture mode, this results in automatic cropping of images at longer zoom settings.

You can either leave the lens’s control ring in it’s ‘D’ position and adjust the zoom via the W/T lever on the rear of the camera, or step through the 24mm, 35mm, 50mm and 60mm positions of the twisty lens control ring. In default mode, this crops JPEG images from 50MP to 24MP, 12MP and 8MP as you extend through the zoom range.

As well as JPEG quality mode, you can select a JPG + DNG option, which captures images in both JPEG and RAW quality modes, the latter being in Adobe DNG format. There’s a slight anomaly here though, at least to my mind, in that if you select one of the marked zoom settings on the lens control ring, instead of leaving it in its ‘Digital’ position, RAW shooting becomes unavailable and you can only capture JPEGs.

It’s also noteworthy that RAW capture limits the maximum resolution of both JPEG and DNG files to 12 megapixels, firmly removing the availability of the 50MP maximum.

A couple of things I’m happy about include that the camera has a removable rather than fixed Li-ion battery. It’s therefore possible to buy spare batteries and charge them up ahead of time, so you’re not stuck without a camera while it’s recharging your one and only battery via its USB-C port. Secondly, the camera takes full-sized SD/HC/XC memory cards, rather than relatively tiny and fragile microSD cards.

Yashica FX-D S300: Performance

Although it might sit more happily in ‘design and handling’, I’ve saved one of the standout features of the FX-D S300 for this section on ‘performance’. The feature in question is the electronic viewfinder, which is present and correct in this camera but lacking from the FX-D 100 and FX-D 300.

That’s despite both of the cheaper cameras featuring a viewfinder cowl that looks pretty bonkers in the absence of an actual viewfinder. A genuine performance boost of the EVF is that it makes composing images very much easier in bright lighting conditions, especially when the sun is overhead or over your shoulder, and glaring off the camera’s rear screen.

The electronic viewfinder itself is of unremarkable quality and has a relatively low resolution, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing. In terms of shooting resolution, the 50MP image sensor sounds like it should give a massive performance boost over the 13MP sensor of the FX-D 100. I was sadly disappointed.

Technically, the image size is 50MP (until you start zooming in with the incumbent crop factors) but images themselves look very pixelated, as if they’ve been digitally upscaled from much lower-resolution originals. Areas of fine detail within subject matter take on the appearance of being treated with a mosaic or watercolor artistic effect, rather than being photo-realistic.

The most true-to-life look is gained by dropping the camera’s resolution to its lowest setting of 12MP. As I’ve mentioned, you’re limited to 12MP capture if you opt to shoot in JPG + DNG (RAW) quality mode, rather than just in JPEG mode.

The film simulation effects and filter effects are of some value and add a bit of a fun element. There are also nine Scene modes that can come in more useful. However, if you’ve got a half-decent photo editing app, you might feel that you’re better off capturing images at the Standard setting and editing them to taste after the event.

Again, compared with the FX-D 100, the S300 has an upsized 1/1.56-inch rather than 1/3-inch image sensor, but with a higher maximum resolution. The net result is that I found image noise to be pretty similar at high ISO settings. Both cameras deliver what I’d call acceptable results, right up to their maximum sensitivity setting of ISO 3200.

Yashica FX-D S300: Sample Images

The gallery below comprises a number of shots taken in the English city of Bath on a sunny morning. I used both the maximum resolution of 50 megapixels and the minimum 12 megapixel option throughout testing, along with the Standard picture style. You’ll notice a couple of sequences of the same subject matter, taken at the shortest and longest zoom setting, with one or two extra shots in between.

Yashica FX-D S300: Video

Above: sample video shot using the Yashica FX-D S300

The camera’s maximum video resolution is 4K30. Smaller available options include 2.7K at 60fps or 30fps, and 1080p or 720p, both at 120fps, 60fps or 30fps. The file format for all of them is MP4/H.264. The camera features an internal microphone plus a standard hack socket for an external mic. Other video functions include slow-motion recording, loop recording, time-lapse recording and a pre-recording option. Optical image stabilization is available in the menu system but I found it to be largely ineffectual in practice.

Yashica FX-D S300: Lab results

There are few direct rivals to the FX-D S300, leaving us with a very limited selection of cameras which we've previously lab tested that can be used as comparisons. The Kodak Pixpro FZ45 is a basic compact camera that costs way less than the Yashica, while the Panasonic Lumix FZ80D costs more but has a far broader zoom range. The Fujifilm X-Half is over double the price of the FX-D S300, but has a similar theme of film photography emulation.

We were only able to lab test the resolution of the FX-D S300, as the camera lacks manual exposure control which we require in order to conduct our dynamic range and signal-to-noise lab tests.

Resolution (line widths/picture height):

We tested the FX-D S300 in its native 12MP shooting mode, and its maximum 50MP mode. In both cases the overall detail resolved was almost identical. The 50MP shots resemble upscaled 12MP shots with edge sharpening, but no additional fine detail.

Consequently, the FX-D S300 resolves no more detail at low sensitivities than the $100 Kodak FZ45, while the 17.7 megapixel Fujifilm X-Half captures noticeably more detail than the '50' megapixel FX-D S300.

Yashica FX-D S300: Verdict

As Yashica’s FX-D series of cameras go, the S300 is definitely the pick of the bunch. It’s the only one of the three that makes sense of its viewfinder cowl, having an actual electronic viewfinder to fill the space. Unsurprisingly, it’s also the most expensive and the camera certainly doesn’t come cheap. The design is all about the retro vibe and the S300 delivers pretty well on its promises, with a decent mash-up of ‘digital’ and ‘analog’ shooting styles.

The only real fly in the ointment is that image quality is mediocre at best. The image sensor is one that you’d more commonly find in a mobile phone than in a ‘proper’ digital camera. As far as I’m concerned, the bottom line is that my Samsung S24 FE mobile phone delivers sharper, more finely detailed and better all-round better image quality than this Yashica camera, which makes the FX-D S300 more of a retro toy for fun and games, rather than being a bit of serious photographic kit.

Alternatives

The Panasonic Lumix ZS99 / TZ99 is one of Panasonic’s more recent ‘travel zoom’ cameras. As such it has a monster 30x optical zoom range equivalent to 24-720mm in full-frame terms, complete with 5-axis hybrid optical image stabilization. All that’s built into a pocket-friendly, downsized build, at a price of around $698 / £519 / AU$999.

A real outdoorsy go-anywhere camera, the OM System Tough TG-7 is pretty much indestructible. It’s waterproof (in a submersible kinda way), shockproof and freezeproof. It also has GPS as part of a full Field Sensor System that also records stuff like temperature and altitude, and has a similar selling price to the Yashica, at around $550 / £399 / AU$639.