Kyocera Yashica - the final camera?

I hadn't heard of this one, but it's a nice rig for 8.2Mp. It apparently has a smaller brother, the EZ7033 with 7.2Mp. And there is the 14Mp Yashica AV1400-HD as well:

www.cnet.com/news/when-was-the-last-time-you-saw-a-yashica-camera/

To continue ...... could one of these 2006 models be the last true Kyocera Yashica? They do have the Kyocera name on them ...

"So who was making all those cameras marketed in 2006 and 2007? I know some were produced at the former Kyocera-owned facility in Brazil and there were some re-badged models being offered too. Models like the EZF5 or the unusual EZ UW5 which boasted a Yashica fixed lens and very limited underwater capability were part of the 'new' Yashica 2008 range but we'll need to grab one of the 2006/2007 models to see if a place of manufacture other than Brazil can be found. More expense ahead I fear..."

A question I have often asked myself!

I recently commented in another topic that around this time (possibly up to about 2004), there were series of digital cameras that had very similar design characteristics that suggested that they were a "true" series from Kyocera, but concurrently (or maybe just a little after) there were also several digital cameras that just seem to be one-offs or even short-series, but were physically unrelated in style to anything produced previously by Kyocera .... and seemingly unrelated to each other (with the odd exception)! This was even before MF Jebsen group came on the scene.

And you are right about the similarity in those "odd" digital cameras to models sold in Brazil, or at the very least, a similar "randomness" in their design characteristics, just like the Brazilian digital models. We need an "insider" to spill the beans 

Just one more note I made to myself back in the early 2000's when I was "doing" my Yashica Family Tree Chart, I spotted that a lot of these odd digital camera models were (or seemed to be) only marketed in Australia, Italy & Czech republic. Another mystery to solve!

Sorry about the extra expense Graham ......

I've never been a fan of brain paralysis. Could I offer something that might help to clarify the production details?  I'll create a new editable spreadsheet that fellow members can contribute information to (or edit/correct existing data), and we can compile some data in a managable manner as a group. It won't be editable by the public, so it can be protected from nonsense and spammers.

Once the data starts shaping up, I can do some reordering and cleanup to whatever is entered. I'd add some initial columns to be filled in for some of the obvious things, like production dates, factory locations, country distributions, 'manufacturer' (i.e., Jebson, Yashica, Kyocera, etc.).

Lumi - I'll definitely contribute to that spreadsheet whenever I can add something new or positive ... after all as time goes by I wonder what the point of gathering all that data was when I was an active member of the Contax Postal Portfolio Club (UK), unless I can pass it on 

Thanks biggles3 .... I am flattered by how you describe my attempt to form a graphical Contax and later, Yashica Family Tree which started as a crude attempt to produce a thumbnail pictorial camera history chart similar to what was available at the time for Canon and Nikon. Encouraged by the input and enthusiasm from David Grandison and then Frazer Allen of the UK's distributors of C/Y cameras, to get out there and meet the "users", their information laid the foundations to my research.

Around about the year 2000 I first had a go at a Contax Family Tree using MS Publisher to add image and text boxes to form a Family Tree Chart. It grew beyond the information held by Photax and Kyocera Yashica UK, and involved contacting Contax and Yashica enthusiasts from all over the world. It also grew from a simple A4 format to A3 and then A2 etc, as more and more variations were added. 

Next was an attempt to do the same for Yashica around about 2003 onward ..... and that is where it started to get really difficult! People all over the world contributed to the chart sending their images of the variants and snippets of information to me. The chart soon became crowded with the myriad of models and colour variants that the chart underwent many layout changes as I tried to squeeze more and more cameras onto the chart. It expanded from A2 to A1 to AO and beyond!

Even to this day, I still regard it as too cluttered compared to my original intention, as even the colour coding of sections (like TLR, SLR, AF, Compacts, Submins etc) does not fully enable a clear view of the various sections and relationships between models. I maintained it enthusiastically right up to the MF Jebsen era and then floundered to where I could go next or to where I should have drawn a line under it! Many of the contributors on this forum will appreciate the problem of naively trying to make a graphical Yashica Family Tree Chart when I didn't fully appreciate the true extent of the output of the great marque!

It is a work in progress and probably contains many errors and omissions or at least some debateable data (e.g. I have used known preview dates where the models were shown at Photokina etc) ... and, of course is even today being corrected as data from this forum comes to light ..... (MANY, MANY thanks to all the contributors to this forum). Also, there are now several other sources of C/Y data on the internet that have gone into far greater depth than I ever could, and have a heritage of knowledge and enthusiasm that well exceeds mine!

It's also difficult to distribute to interested parties as the native MS Publisher file is 27MB and the exported Jpeg is 6MB compressed, 100MB uncompressed! Also, to be able to see any meaningful images of the cameras on the chart, it would require at least an A0 printer ... not available to every C/Y enthusiast on this forum! And as an added problem, is being constantly updated every month nearly, as data comes to light (from this forum!).

Some of my data has also been stored as spreadsheet data and maybe that is where I can contribute to a "group" database as Lumiworx suggested.

I am open to suggestions to how I can best show the chart to interested parties, given the problems mentioned above 

Yashica Family Tree at approx 10% full size

Okay... I've created a basic spreadsheet online. In order to keep it protected I'll need to add anyone wanting to modify it as an editor to get you full access. For those who want to follow along and not make any modifications, I can also add you as a viewer. At some point we can make it fully public for anyone to view, without needing any invitations.

For the moment, I'll assume that biggles3 and bobblehat and myself will be editing data, so if anyone else would like access, please send me a message through the forum and let me know if you'd like access as either an editor or a viewer.