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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Medium format cameras

  
 
_pin
21:09 / 10.06.03
What the fuck makes me think I want a medium format camera? Is it the way I'll need a roll of tape to stop light leaking in? The way light leaking in sounds like the pictures'll look ace? The way they're big, and old-looking, and seem fantastic?

So is the film hard to get, and hard to develop? WHY IS A CAMERA GIVING ME WOOD??

Is it horrible, and expensive, and a stupid waste of time? I want one. They seem fun.
 
 
Mystery Gypt
22:14 / 10.06.03
they are professional cameras.

they are not fun.

the pictures they take are incredible because the film is so large and the lenses tend to be amazing.

the pictures are really, REALLY good. even without light leaking in. (which mainly just bleaches the image).
 
 
Mystery Gypt
22:14 / 10.06.03
oh and they're not really outdated either. i think the majority of pro photographers use these over digital cameras any day.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
22:39 / 10.06.03
Finding processing places for them may be difficult, however.

I've got one. You can pick up a Lubitel 166 on eBay or somewhere similar for about £20. They're very much hit-and-miss when it comes to quality, however. But when it works:


Woohoo!
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
22:40 / 10.06.03
Film isn't that hard to run across, either, IIRC...
 
 
videodrome
00:27 / 11.06.03
First, let's clarify - are you talking about true medium format (2 inch negative) or the larger 4X5, i.e. a small large-format?
 
 
_pin
07:29 / 11.06.03
6x6 is you take the internal... thing out, otherwise it's 6x4.5.

Now is it a wanker to get film? And developing? Can I get it developed normally?

It's this, by the way.
 
 
waxy dan
07:54 / 11.06.03
Nah, it's easy. You just have to go to a photography store, not Boots.

I got a Flexorat a few years ago, and, while I don't give it the attention it truly deserves, it really is a lovely thing. Big old Eastern-bloc mechanical monster, it's a beautiful bit o' kit.
 
 
Olulabelle
08:43 / 11.06.03
My Dad was a professional landscape and wildlife photographer and he had a proper, proper medium format camera which cost him about £5,000. The pictures they take are astounding in quality, but they are definitely being phased out by digital camera's - he had one of those too which he used in the last year far, far more, as did his colleagues. Both cameras are now sitting in a huge box full of various assorted cameras, camera equipment and stuff which none of us know WTF to do with.

Oh, and any professional developing place or shop will sell the film, and develop it for you.
 
 
waxy dan
09:56 / 11.06.03
I think maybe it's differnet with the poorer quality cameras.
Mine, for example, is a big chunk of metal with twirly bits and screws. The quality of the shot in terms of focus, colour range, etc. on my digital (4mp) is far superior.

But the medium format gives everything a soft blur and a character to the shadows that I couldn't produce easily even in Photoshop.
 
 
gifted
10:35 / 12.06.03
medium format cameras are quite cumbersome compared to SLR's but they do produce a better image.

My other half is a photography student and she picked up her Mamiya for £500, which she regarded as a good deal. The easiest (and cheapest) way to get film is mail order - pick up a copy of any of the regular photo mags e.g. A P, Black & White photographer and check out the ads.
 
 
nickyludd
23:51 / 13.06.03
I use the Mamiya TLR system. The Mamiya is the only TLR with interchangeable lenses, but the rest of this applies to any TLR.

These are quieter than SLRs. Yes they are biggish. Looking down onto the viewing screen is a different experince to looking through a viewfinder - it is more akin to looking at an actual print. In other words, the taking experience distances you more from the subject and puts you closer to the print. This changes things for landscape and also for portrait. Also, the very unusual look of the camera changes how the people being photographed respond.

A TLR slows you down - it makes the taking process different.

Oh, and a TLR is better for flash than any SLR.

Give med format a try. The Lubitel really is not that good, unless you get one at a car boot sale for >£10.
Otherwise look out for a 2nd hand Yashica or similar.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
08:56 / 15.06.03
The following his highly opinionated and based largely on my own experiences in photography.

Medium format is the refined elegant cousin to the quick and dirty 35mm camera. Like any of the formats (35mm, medium, large, stereographic, panoramic, polaroid, so on and so forth) it has it's pros and cons.

On the pro side, the negatives are larger and subsequently can be enlarged that much more without the loss of quality that would be experienced in 35mm. The don't nessecarily have to be soft focus and can even the manuals can be focused just as sharply as an AF if you have the eye for it (a principle which has always applied). It is worth noting that from their very design they do tend to lend themselves to shooting images with a shorter depth of field.

On the con side, these cameras are slower, often heavier, more cumbersome and require a different means of thinking. The film (usually 120 but not always) only allows for 12 shots and the whole set up to picture will take longer. There is no happy snapping with one of these cameras unless you have aeons of experience and plenty of cash to drop on film.

The main thrust of these cameras is that you take time, patience and care with each picture that you shoot and aim for a far higher success rate. For a very long time they have been designed, developed and marketed for pro/studio work. That said there has been a move to make them more accessible to the less moneyed and industry employed. Pentax came out with a range of SLR format cameras that performed very well when being field tested by amateurs and hobbyists.

I would disagree that MF cameras are being phased out by digital in favour of saying that they are being replaced by MF digital cameras.

I myself have a russian box 120 (£20 from ebay oh yes) and will be putting it to good use this summer, and just be really smug I'm also going to be acquiring an 8 X 10 plate camera that used to belong to my grandad. You do need to rethink the way you do stuff as it will start of as counter intuitive.

On the subject of film - go here MailShots if you are UK based. You can also visit Jessops, Snappy Snaps, London Camera Exchange and practically every independant around. Most of these will develop although they sometimes send away which will take about a week.

If you are thinking about it, I would advise a cheap one to start as you may not enjoy it and deprciations a bitch on those big ones.

I think I've said more than enough except thanks to Bill for pointing me here where I can witter about a subject that is my entire sad little life.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
22:54 / 15.06.03
I'd really like to throw this thread open to discussion of techniques for MF cameras. As potus suggested, they are quite counter-intuitive when you start off with them - I still find it difficult to use my big box, largely because I'm not au fait with a manual camera at all yet. How have people learnt to use a TLR? What gives good shots? Spill? How much difference does flash make, etc, etc.

I don't agree with digis overtaking MF wholesale, either: most of the fashion shots that appear in mags that I've worked on are still taken on MF cameras, providing bigger trannies. I'd also agree in shelling out fuck-all for a Lubitel or a Holga or some such until you get the hang of 'em - ebay.co.uk was my saviour, given that I had one half-inched from me while I visited back home... and to be honest, I was more pissed off about the film being stolen than the camera per se.

Although I may just have to buy a Holga now I've seen 'em that cheap...

So, back to it: tell us your MF secrets, mfers!
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
19:43 / 16.06.03
TLR's are interesting little toys to learn tom play with. like a rubix cube they will start of as a mixture of fascinating and annoying, fortunately the similarity ends there. Learning to use the thing properly is easier, becoming it's master won't bring you five seconds of fame on Blue Peter followed by a life of pasty-faced oblivion.

As I said before. MF is slow, cumbersome cousin of the quick and dirty 35mm.

The first trick with TLR is to learn is to be patient and think before you move. Yes it is annoying, you turn one way the picture whizzes out of your frame the other way. Like riding a bike there is a learning curve that fortunately for you, the gurning brand new owner of one of these pieces of kit, get easier not harder. Like all things some will learn quicker than others, but without patience then you may as well quit now while you're not so far behind.

The rules of composition are exactly the same for any type of camera and subsequently breaking the rules should be done in the same way.

Ultimately, like many things in life, the best thing to do for learning to use one of these things is to keep practicing until you stop thining about how to do it and get the hell on with reaching for what you want to achieve.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
10:22 / 22.06.03
Well, I've got a glass-lensed Holga WOCA with flash coming in the mail in the next week. My advice is to scope out eBay rather than some of the online shops - we're talking 50% markups in a lot of cases! Use an auction sniping site to ensure you get the auction, if you're concerned...
 
 
Linus Dunce
11:43 / 22.06.03
I don't agree with digis overtaking MF wholesale, either: most of the fashion shots that appear in mags that I've worked on are still taken on MF cameras, providing bigger trannies.

Another reason for using film, someone explained to me, was that skintones are much better. And I've seen handshots (i.e., a picture of a hand holding a product) straight from a digital camera -- the skin looked quite corpse-like. The blue veins and the white areas where the fingers held the product really stood out. It took a lot of retouching to make them look good enough to print.

YMMV on a digital camera, of course, especially if you are doing amateur or art stuff.

For fun, I use a 35mm SLR, prints done at Boots (a UK drugstore chain) and a basic desktop scanner. You can get a surprising amount of size/detail/colour this way, especially if you have some basic retouching skills -- way better than any digital I could possibly afford. So if I were to move on, I'd probably get a medium-format film camera too.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
11:27 / 29.06.03
skintones are much better

This is a fallacy, a very crap one and unfortunately rather widespread. The information is always there to give very accurate skin tones but more often than not the soft and harware being used to interpolate the information is not set or calibrated properly to reflect what you consider to be reality. It's one of my few arguments in the defence of digital. Remember, you're using a computer to control these things that become variables to a far greater degree than exist with film format photography. If you tell a computer that the world was the shape of the Taco Bell Chuhuahua then it would believe it implicitly until told otherwise.

On a more personal note, please for the love of god stop using Boots.

Firstly this is for quality sake. Boots use mass labs with little interest in proper calibration over high volume turnover. As a result more films get screwed up but them than almost any other service provider. Also they have a tendancy to over-balance blue and this is never a good thing.

Secondly, you should be going to an independant lab, if not pro lab. With the advent of digital these places are really suffering and many are going out of business. As these places have a far more vested interest in providing good service and quality product they really should be more supported. Hell, even Jessops and Snappy Snaps do a better job than Boots and are probably cheaper.
 
 
Linus Dunce
19:10 / 29.06.03
Ah, Potus, I did qualify my statement a bit by saying it was something someone had told me, borne out by a single personal experience. :-)

Getting your ICC profiles and curves all in row is bastard hard though, especially when each bit of the workflow is done in a different place, by people all keen to demarcate their jobs as much as possible under deadline pressure. Perhaps that's why people say they think film is better -- you know what the original looked like because it's right there in your hand? I dunno. Don't work with that stuff at the moment.

As for Boots, well, yes, I know. I just do it for fun, I tend to use the in-house ones and 90 percent of my shots are of friends gurning over pints of beer. Though I've not had good experience with Snappy Snaps in the past -- they persisted in using that horrible crinkly paper when I asked them not to. Rest assured, if I want a decent print, I'll go to a proper lab.
 
  
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