Medium Format Film

My big new development as of the last couple of weeks is that I have assembled a set of gear to shoot medium format film!

I have just gotten tired of the limitations of digital, and all of the image quality issues you get with digital cameras. My 30D is really bad about chromatic aberration (namely purple fringing) and noise. I also have grown tired of the light speed process you get sucked into of constantly snapping hundreds of photos in a short period, then rushing home to copy files and do a bunch of RAW conversions and Photoshop to get things looking alright. Even then, I've never been happy with the size or image quality of digital photography (at least the level of digital photography that a mere mortal can afford).

I've also always felt like there was an element of "the craft" missing from digital photography. It would be akin to a woodworker using a bunch of CNC equipment to build things, rather than taking a hands-on approach each step of the way. Even if you produce an excellent final product, you still don't get the same satisfaction if you didn't really immerse yourself into the process in a more traditional way.

After a long stretch of researching and daydreaming, I decided to take a serious look at the film options that are available these days. When I saw what could be done in medium format film quality-wise and cost-wise, I realized that I should have made the "backwards" switch to film long ago.

I did some research to figure out the optimal equipment/brand for what I want to do and I settled on a used Mamiya 645 Pro that I found on eBay. I think it was manufactured around 1992, but it came to me in mint condition. It has some metering/auto-exposure capabilities, but is purely manual focus and manual aperture. It shoots 645 format images on 120 roll film. I also got a Polaroid back for it so that I can shoot test shots (Polaroid stopped making the instant film for the backs but Fuji makes an excellent line of it now). Initially, I just had an 80mm lens, but I have just gotten my hands on a 35mm lens as well. For special occasions, I'm also open to the prospect of getting a 4x5 view camera. I'd like to have the added camera movements that you get with a view camera so that I could truly have the fullest control over a composition, but I'll just be working in the 645 format for now.

My workflow is still half digital because I scan my processed film and finalize the image appearance digitally, but there really isn't much to do other than clean some dust specs off of the scanned image. My scanner is able to get something around 90 Megapixels worth of image data off of a good shot on Fuji Velvia 50 slide film. There is probably even more to be had since the film grain is so fine on Velvia 50, but it already generates a 500MB+ digital image that is unwieldy to say the least. There is so much image data on a piece of medium format film that digital cameras still can't compete with medium format film (though I think they really have clearly surpassed 35mm film at this point).

I had an opportunity go out and shoot a few rolls (2 rolls of Fuji Velvia 50 and 1 roll of Ilford PanF Plus B&W 50) last weekend and I am really stunned by the results. I'm really excited considering the results I've gotten from the first rolls of MF film I've ever shot. I haven't finished scanning my dozen or so compositions, but I have had a chance to get four of them prepped and added to my gallery, and there will be more to follow over the coming days. I hope you like them, and I'm glad to receive any feedback from other MF film shooters, or answer any questions I can for people who may also be considering switching over to MF film like I have.

P.S. I still have my 30D and I will still use it for wildlife, action, etc, but I will probably shoot almost exclusively on my 645 camera for the foreseeable future.