[Sylvain]

And the second question is...

 

35mm, Medium Format ?

 

As some of you may know, I bought a mamiya 645 Pro in super good shape, with a good finder, a 80mm f/2.8 & 135 f/3.5, all in mint condition for something like 400€-500€.

 

The choice of medium format was partly due to :

a- I already own a OM-1 camera and I found 35mm to be super painful to scan on a flatbed

b- I had to take a flatbed because I'll have a few 4x5 to scan too...

c- I got a very nice medium format enlarger at a bargain price and I intend to get back to my meager knowledge of the dark room

d- Medium format scans quite nicely on a flatbed scanner.Without too much hassle (but hassle is still here, I had to get an after market holder, Epson's suck, as advertised). And that scanning gets you around 30MP territory, which I'm far off with my MFT camera. (I don't care for the argument that I could shoot digital FF more economically)

e- I could somehow discern a click above 35mm film photography. The kind of gap you see between an MFT & a full frame camera I guess. Or maybe it's just because of the population using MF was mostly experienced & pro photographers.

Anyway, I have developped a new kind of gear lust :

The Carl Zeiss Planar 110mm F/2 for Hasselblad 6x6. It's a total obsession.

and ... I haven't talked about the Plaubel Makina 67 yet...

 

Anybody owning one of these around here ?

 

Cheers !

[JJ_SO]

In my negative archives are about 700 MF films, mostly B/W and 1/3 are slides. I fully understand and agree what you said about scanning (Epson V700/750 does have good film holders and spare ones are available at reasonable costs) and do understand as well your joy about photographing this way.

 

What you didn't mention but would mean a lot to me: You now have two backup copies of each picture: The one on film will always be visible and independant on IT developments, changing hardware and data Alzheimer. That's the reason I keep the archive folders and try to take a bit of care because on some of the sheets I saw traces of insects eating them away. I don't see it as a bad thing that costs like film, paper, chemicals come again - there's a worth in it and in the work you have to do after pressing the button.

 

But I will not go back on film, having the spotmeter clipped in my pocket and using the zone-system to get the pictures on paper I already saw in my mind.

 

30MP might sound a lot and on B/W it's great. It's just the scanner produces a mass of data and the pictures remain as grainy as film is - and I don't believe in the beauty of grain for artistic reasons just to turn a contra into a pro. To me that does belong to my film era, gladly I had a long and joyful one.

 

These days I discovered another way of getting HQ travel pics: I got to Sigma DP Merill, small cameras with fixed lens (never ever dust on a sensor   ) weighing less than 400 grams. One has a 19mm, the other a 50mm lens, a lot of downsides - but each is producing excellent quality. Sigma does say 46MP but this is only equivalence to a common Bayer-pattern sensor. In good light conditions the results are at D800 level or above, colours and texture are outstanding. Beyond 400 ISO they start to become quickly "out of discussion" quality.

 

With those two cams + batteries + bag + lightweight Sirui tripod I do carry 2.3 kg on a belt.

 

D800 + grip + 24-105 + holster bag = 2.7kg, no tripod, no extra lens. I was hiking with 8kg bagpack mostly filled with lenses and accessories, my back wasn't pleased too much. With primes (especially the new 50/1.4 Art), I can come close to IQ of the Sigma Merills - and in a different weight class, too. I'll never give up the D800 for it, it's a low light and dynamic range monster and much faster in shooting and editing.

 

Because Sigma is bringing a new DP-line to market, the Merills are now available at low prices - mine were 750 € altogether.

[Sylvain]

Hello Joju,

 

I agree with you on the merit of film as an extra medium to survive times but that too is relatively fragile, sadly, so it's not my main reason. I've been looking mostly into "doing something else" than my typical photography.

 

As for holders, I acquired a better scanning holder that I haven't tried yet but it sure looks like it's going to improve the workflow speed by two. I wasn't ever sure of the focus accuracy, the film curl was noticeable (on kodak, ilford, ...) and I couldn't stand clipping and unclipping these frames. The MF holder I have uses these ANR glass, I hope it's going to be successful.

 

Strangely, despite the gain of "resolution", I intend it mostly for portraiture eventhough I was mostly a landscape shooter.

 

Merrills are oustanding buggy cameras :-)

[JJ_SO]

AntiNewtonRing glass brings the disadvantage of 4 additional surfaces to collect dust. In my experience, focus never was a problem. I wrote some documents just for me about different workflows. What can I say: After a while it gets boring and I discovered better or faster way to do my scans.

 

For instance, I first did a RAW scan of 1 GB of the whole scan area. Afterwards I loaded those scans into VueScan and that software did the clipping more or less automatically. Even better: instead of moving the scan rail to each negative exposure, I had one go and could adjust tone scale afterwards. That was a lot faster. And a lot less annoying noise, too.

 

So far I didn't discover bugs on the Merills after updating the firmware. They do have flaws, of course, but optics and sensor are hard to beat in their size class.

[Guest]

I used a Mamiya 7 for a few years. To be honest the lenses for that thing are quite a bit better than for the 645; but no clue how much they sell for these days. Also it is a rangefinder and not an SLR (if that matters). To be honest I kind of prefer a 6x7 with a 150 or 80 lens (even if the lens is f4) to a aspc with 56f1.2. Not sure why but most of my better pictures were taken with that thing.

[Sylvain]

There are of course more desirable MF options, mamiya 7 is one, so are some hasseblad or contax, but I couldn't find any that were so cheap and yet providing Av mode. I consider I have the best mix of "modernity" & "low price". Perhaps at the cost of some "identifiable look" but I'm quite happy with what I get.

 

I went back to full manual before and frankly, it annoyed me more than I'd want.

[JJ_SO]

I think for portraits MF is perfect. I always liked the waistlevel viewfinder. When I put myself in front of it I never felt "shot" like a SLR was aiming at my face. It is something very different and the moments of two faces (my and the model's) not facing (=confronting) each other were part of a more relaxed atmosphere which helped me a lot to get better portraits.

 

Unfortunately this kind of viewfinder at the 645 is a pain for portrait orientation. After a while I got used  better to it but always wished a 6×6 Hasselblad or Rollei for that reason. While a Mamiya RB/RZ67 was doing the same trick by rotating the film-holder, I found that thing a bit too monstrous.

 

Still, I won't go back to this cameras. I never got the same amount of details like I recently get with the "buggy" Merills. The quality is better than I ever saw from my Mamiya.

 



 

Same picture in fullsize

[haring]

And the second question is...

 

35mm, Medium Format ?

 

As some of you may know, I bought a mamiya 645 Pro in super good shape, with a good finder, a 80mm f/2.8 & 135 f/3.5, all in mint condition for something like 400€-500€.

 

The choice of medium format was partly due to :

a- I already own a OM-1 camera and I found 35mm to be super painful to scan on a flatbed

b- I had to take a flatbed because I'll have a few 4x5 to scan too...

c- I got a very nice medium format enlarger at a bargain price and I intend to get back to my meager knowledge of the dark room

d- Medium format scans quite nicely on a flatbed scanner.Without too much hassle (but hassle is still here, I had to get an after market holder, Epson's suck, as advertised). And that scanning gets you around 30MP territory, which I'm far off with my MFT camera. (I don't care for the argument that I could shoot digital FF more economically)

e- I could somehow discern a click above 35mm film photography. The kind of gap you see between an MFT & a full frame camera I guess. Or maybe it's just because of the population using MF was mostly experienced & pro photographers.

Anyway, I have developped a new kind of gear lust :

The Carl Zeiss Planar 110mm F/2 for Hasselblad 6x6. It's a total obsession.

and ... I haven't talked about the Plaubel Makina 67 yet...

 

Anybody owning one of these around here ?

 

Cheers !

Welcome to the MF world!

Shooting film is challenging but extremley rewarding. You have to do something different if you want to be unique.

I am not a big fan of MF digital but MF film still has something unexplored beauty to it!

Enjoy!!!