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A recent post in the forum by ksporry
regarding medium format cameras got me thinking...
Just how many licks does
it tae to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsi
pop?
No, not really.
It got me thinking about my own progression
in photography over the years.
I started out with a minolta
waterproof 110 film camera. This was a christmas
gift when I was 12 or 13. It served me well into my
20's. When I was 26 I bought a Pentax PZ-10 SLR witha
28-210 f1,334,256 zoom. (OK, maybe the lens was not
quite that slow, but I didn't know my apertures
from a hole in the ground at that point in time...)
This I used to document some of my time in the wilds
of Alaska. This camera was my main photographic tool
until the year 2000 when I bought my first digital camera,
an Olympus DR340R 1.3 megapixel beauty. After my first
digital camera the upgrades started to happen much faster
and now I have worked my way through to my second generation
digital SLR.
In these days of bajilion frames-per-second
gigapixel pro SLR bodies that can almost take MOVIES
due to the their high frame rates it has become more
and more difficult for me to take good candid street
shots.
People seem to be more than a little bit intimidated
when I winch up a behemoth Canon 1D Mark II to my eye
and I snap off a few photos of them. The mirror slap
really is too much of an attention getter. (That was
one thing I LOVED about the Olymus E-10. It has a leaf
curtain shutter that is about as silent as you can get)
But with all this new gadettry I have found that taking
a few BIG steps back technologically is the key when
looking for the perfect gear for candid street photography.
A solution for a lot of people is to use a 35mm rangefinder.
A Leica
for those with money to burn, or for the more fiscally
conservative in the crowd something like a Voightlander
Bessa. Or if you really want to go ghetto grab a
lomo or an old 70's rangfinder like an Olympus
DC....) I do use a Lomo
LC-A and some older 70's rangefinders, but Iseem
to prefer a little more "real estate" in my
negatives.
Enter the Medium format 6x6 TLR.
35mm is good. No question there. The cameras are smaller
and lighter, and the controls are intuitive. But where
35 mm is good, medium format is Great. If only for the
reason that the negative are ALOT larger. This means
sharper images, with better tonality and more true to
life color gradation.
For my purposes I have found that the old fashioned
TLR is the best. TLR stands for Twin Lens Reflex. As
opposed to a SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera where the
same single lens allows you to both frame the shot AND
take the picture, a TLR is a little bit different.
For those of you who are not familiar with TLRs, think
about the last camera you say your grandfather, (or
HIS father) using. The old vertical box with two lenses
that requires you to look down on a ground glass focusing
screen.
"The Grandpa camera" I like
to call it.
The fact that the image is horizontally reversed, ie,
when you pan right the image appears to go left and
vice versa can be quite tricky to get used to, especially
when trying to level a shot. And while at first you
won't find yourself tagging ducks on the wing and getting
off spectacular hip shots, after a while you start to
get the hang of it.
Another thing I really like about it is that the shutter
is REALLY quiet. There is also the benefit
that a lot of people have a hard time recognizing the
thing as an honest to goodness camera. This means you
can catch people in a more relaxed, natural state.
The fact that you don't need to bring it up to your
eye to take a picture makes it a lot easier to just
turn and grab a scene without appearing to have realy
done anything.
And even if they do recognice it as a
camera, they don't take it very seriously because after
all, what sane person would be using on of "Those
Old Things? "Do they even make film for them
anymore....?" is a common question I get when
using it.
Ahhh.... But there in lies the magic of it all.
Little do these people realize but this camera, a dinosaur
from the past, is capable of producing some of the most
oustanding results.
And speaking of dinosours, scientists have recently
discovered actual soft
tissue in 70 million year olf T-rex bones. Can anyone
say "Jurassic Park"?... Now THAT
would make for some interesting photography...
Most people don't realize it, but the camera as an
image recording tool was perfected long ago. All that
has really changed is that they have become cheaper
(in a bad way), faster, and smaller. But when you come
down to it, it is still just a light-tight box with
a lens on one side and film on the other. If you don't
need speed, and can get by with a camera the size of
a can of Foster's Lager, then a TLR is for you.
They are also fully manual. I am not ashamed to say
that this scared me a little at first. After all, digital
is what I have shot for 5+ years now where if I needed
to, I could let the camera decide what exact settings
to use. But as time has gone by I have started to less
and less rely on the camera to make these decisions
and more on myslef to decide what settings to use to
get the look I wanted.
So go out and grab an old film camera. you just may
surprise yourself with the results.
All of today photos were shot with my trusty Rolleicord
Vb 6x6 TLR.
Comment 49
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