Just bought a Mamiya C220
So, I haven't been feeling so great recently, and one of my biggest flaws is that I tend to try and compensate for that by buying things. Call it some sort of retail therapy. I know it doesn't really help, but ultimately I do it anyway.
This time around I decided to invest in a medium format camera. The main reason I did this was because for portraiture work. I managed to take a very nice-looking photograph of a friend, and I found myself wishing that I had a bigger piece of film to look at. I've been growing increasingly frustrated with the fact that I need to scan in my film to digital before I can really get a good look at it. Putting an 8x loupe over a 35mm frame is OK, but not really comfortable, and you can't really get a great feeling for holding a picture in your hand when it's that small.
Plus, medium format offers greater resolution and the ability to make bigger prints. I've been scanning in my 35mm film at 4000dpi with a Nikon Coolscan V-ED scanner, and it seems like at that resolution (6,000 x 4,000, or 24megapixels!) the film itself has become the limiting factor.
Finally, on my trip to Greece and Italy, I felt as though people would get more self-conscious when they saw that I had my big camera pointed at them. It was much more difficult to get a nice candid photo of friends and family.
All of these things led me to start researching alternative format cameras. Ideally I would shoot a giant piece of film, like a view camera, but large format cameras are simply too big and complicated to shoot candid people photos with. They're really intended for studio work or landscape photography. That left only medium format. Most of the SLR choices were very expensive (not even going to discuss the cost of a Hasselblad system, but even the Mamiya 645 series was pretty expensive).
Then I discovered Twin Lens Reflex camera systems, and I knew I had found what I wanted. These are relatively small cameras, so they are easy to carry around discreetly, and the fact that they are mostly waist-level viewfinders enables you to take pictures on the sly much more easily. You can even turn your body to the side as if you're not looking at your subject and just turn the camera lens towards them to take their picture! Plus on eBay the prices were quite reasonable.
Originally I was looking at RolleiFlex cameras, because of the quality of the camera and lenses, but the auction prices for any that were known to be in good working condition seemed to approach $200 with regularity, and I was a little bit concerned about paying that much for a very old camera with an unknown history. Plus the fact that it was a fixed lens design with no possibility of switching the lens was not very appealing to me.
Then I found the Mamiya C220 and C330 cameras. They have interchangeable lenses! Plus the cost of the camera with an 80mm lens was only marginally higher than the RolleiFlexes. I found a dealer who seemed reputable on eBay, and I ended up buying a C220 with the 80mm lens, plus a wider 65mm lens and a telephoto 135mm lens. The package will hopefully arrive by Friday, so I will have something to play with. I'll let you know how it goes! :-)
This time around I decided to invest in a medium format camera. The main reason I did this was because for portraiture work. I managed to take a very nice-looking photograph of a friend, and I found myself wishing that I had a bigger piece of film to look at. I've been growing increasingly frustrated with the fact that I need to scan in my film to digital before I can really get a good look at it. Putting an 8x loupe over a 35mm frame is OK, but not really comfortable, and you can't really get a great feeling for holding a picture in your hand when it's that small.
Plus, medium format offers greater resolution and the ability to make bigger prints. I've been scanning in my 35mm film at 4000dpi with a Nikon Coolscan V-ED scanner, and it seems like at that resolution (6,000 x 4,000, or 24megapixels!) the film itself has become the limiting factor.
Finally, on my trip to Greece and Italy, I felt as though people would get more self-conscious when they saw that I had my big camera pointed at them. It was much more difficult to get a nice candid photo of friends and family.
All of these things led me to start researching alternative format cameras. Ideally I would shoot a giant piece of film, like a view camera, but large format cameras are simply too big and complicated to shoot candid people photos with. They're really intended for studio work or landscape photography. That left only medium format. Most of the SLR choices were very expensive (not even going to discuss the cost of a Hasselblad system, but even the Mamiya 645 series was pretty expensive).
Then I discovered Twin Lens Reflex camera systems, and I knew I had found what I wanted. These are relatively small cameras, so they are easy to carry around discreetly, and the fact that they are mostly waist-level viewfinders enables you to take pictures on the sly much more easily. You can even turn your body to the side as if you're not looking at your subject and just turn the camera lens towards them to take their picture! Plus on eBay the prices were quite reasonable.
Originally I was looking at RolleiFlex cameras, because of the quality of the camera and lenses, but the auction prices for any that were known to be in good working condition seemed to approach $200 with regularity, and I was a little bit concerned about paying that much for a very old camera with an unknown history. Plus the fact that it was a fixed lens design with no possibility of switching the lens was not very appealing to me.
Then I found the Mamiya C220 and C330 cameras. They have interchangeable lenses! Plus the cost of the camera with an 80mm lens was only marginally higher than the RolleiFlexes. I found a dealer who seemed reputable on eBay, and I ended up buying a C220 with the 80mm lens, plus a wider 65mm lens and a telephoto 135mm lens. The package will hopefully arrive by Friday, so I will have something to play with. I'll let you know how it goes! :-)
posted by Chris at 12:16 AM
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