Retvrn to Medium Format

As I mentioned in the Fujifilm GA645Zi post, I got out of the 120 game because I missed film grain, but mostly because I found that the workflow was just not worth the outcome. I was:

• Propping off my rolls of 120 at Foto Huus in the morning
• Picking them up after work,
• Setting up my old copy stand + light table + fuji camera scanning setup.
• Painstakingly scanning 645 four shots at a time
  • Scanning 645 frames is extra annoying, because in order to scan them properly, the film needs to be perpendicular to your camera, so as you're pulling the film through, its running into your copy stand base
    • But Stefan, I know you're thinking, just get an L-bracket and then you don't have to worry about it. I did! But that was enough extra weight that the little plastic arm on the "Valoi essential copy stand v2" holding the camera started dipping too much and adding skew. Don't buy that copy stand btw.
• Uh, then inverting with SmartConvert (at the time) because I couldn't invert with Silverfast due to the license being tied to my 35mm scanner. 

All of that to get images that definitely were not bad, but ones that I did not feel were worth it over shooting 35mm. Especially so because the autofocus on the GA645Zi is quite bad and they would usually be blurry. I gave up on medium format in Februaryish 2024 and sold my GA645Zi.

You've read the title, you know what happened. I bought a medium format camera again.

I felt happy with what I was getting out of 35mm and I wanted a new challenge. I was interested in trying out square format, and poked around at a few potential options. I did even swap a point and shoot I wasn't using for a functional TLR (Yashica 124) but I haven't really used it that much because it's huge and a bit too slow to use. 

I put a few rolls of black and white through it.

Someone in a photography discord I lurk in kept posting absolute bangers from his Mamiya 6 + 50mm, and then of course Foto Haus Basel posted a Mamiya 6 + all three lenses for a very reasonable price. After sitting on it for a week, I jumped on it.

The Mamiya 6 is the lesser well known 6x6 ancestor of one of the most meme medium format cameras ever made, the Mamiya 7. The Mamiya 6 is a bit smaller, and has this amazing feature where the lens can collapse a bit into the body. It's still fucking huge though, compared to the other cameras I use. It showed up around when my family got here in December, so I didn't get to use it that much at the time but I do really like how it looks and feels.

I do love shooting it but what kind of killed it for me was having to use my old copy stand setup to scan the negatives, so I ordered the Valoi easy120. It wasn't going to arrive until at least January, and my family was around, so I didn't use any of my medium format cameras that much except to pop off random shots around Zurich. My plan was to develop and scan them all later in the month. 

I still shot a couple test rolls though just to make sure the camera was working. Here was some Kodak Gold and Kentmere

The Valoi easy120 showed up and I didn't count on how freaking massive it was. 

But hey, it worked great. I could finally scan my squares.

Something was off though–why were these pics so glowy? 

The Mamiya 6 came with all the lenses for the system: a 50mm, a 75mm, and a 150mm. The 75mm is notorious for having the chemicals between the lens elements degrade and thus add some haze to the image. I didn't realize this when I bought the camera. I did recently pick up a clean copy of the 75mm, but hitting this issue did kind of deflate my joy a bit from using the system. I found the 50mm a bit too wide and the 150mm a bit too massive, and the corresponding framelines in the rangefinder too tiny.

I did actually take the 150mm out to play one day, just walking around after work, and I did get some fun shots on lomo turquoise.

The main reason I got into medium format was to experiment and try new things. It's also easier to get through 12 6x6 shots on a roll of 120 than 36 shots on.

My chemicals were close to dead so I tried cross processing some 30 year old provia 100f. I shot it at box speed on the 50mm and it came out surprisingly great!

Also in the vein of experimentation, I shot some Lomo purple on the glowy 75mm, but it's a bit too weird for me.

As I said, I did get a clean copy of the 75mm, but I've only put one roll through it, to verify it was actually clean compared to my old 75mm.

However, I haven't given the mam6 a chance to really shine with some banger landscapes. That's partly because the weather has been pretty crap here and I haven't had much opportunity to go hiking, but it's also partly because I jumped on another medium format camera a few weeks ago that truly sparks joy...but that's for another post.