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2026-06-22 Kyocera Yashica CS-250AF Flash


The Kyocera Yashica CS-250AF was the largest flash Yashica made. Despite the fact that Yashica only produced one manual-focus SLR capable of employing Through-The-Lens flash—the FX103—it produced three flashes that should work with any TTL Contax/Yashica body.










Flash    GN (100) Weight  Batteries Bounce      Coverage           Modes
CS-203      20           ?          2 x AA       No                  ?                TTL / M 
CS-221      22         176 g     4 x AA     Vertical         35mm            TTL / M
CS-250AF 27         235 g     4 x AA     Vertical     Zoom(28-85)      TTL / M

The CS-250AF flash can tilt up, but can’t swivel. It can project an autofocus aid for the cameras that needed it. 

    There is an attached battery door and a screw-on-cover for some connection cable. 















    
    At the top of the image you can see the read-out of the head setting. It can be manually zoomed 28/35/50/85 mm. That figure is transposed to the scale just below the graph. As that scale is moved the distances are changed just below the graphed flash ranges. As you go wide the distances fall. As you zoom tighter the operating range gets larger.
    The operating ranges are shown at four apertures. At the closest setting at ISO 400 you would set f/32 and could shoot out to 2.3 m (7 feet). At the same ISO 400 using f/4 you would overexpose below 2.7 m (9 feet), be correctly exposed to over 15 m (50 feet) and underexposed at greater distances. Using ISO 100 film all the same figures apply except the camera would have to be set to f/2, and your lens would have to be that “fast” to work.

    You can chose to use the flash manually at full, ¼ power and 1/16 power. You could also chose to use the flash head set to 85 mm with a wide-angle lens and get greater range and a spot light on the subject effect, or if you were close with a normal or telephoto lens you could set the zoom head to 28 mm to cut the power a bit. There is a test button so many things can be checked to see if you have the power.
    It was pointed out all three Yashica flash feet have three holes for contact pins, but only the CS-250AF has all three pins.

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