I'm still shooting and developing film, but for this instalment 2-1/4 x 2-1/4" (6x6cm) medium-format shooting with my venerable Mamiya C33 is the focus. My promise to compare a couple of digital images to their 35mm film re-creations will have to wait until next time.
Since my 28" cable-release works so well with the C33 (much better than the 20 ft. air release, or my jury-rigged substitute for it), I decided to shoot some selfies using the cable-release. Doing this with a TLR with no internal metering or auto-exposure and (of course) no autofocus, presented some challenges. These would be direct, not mirror shots, and the distance would be limited by the cable-release and my arm. I measured the distance from my body to the film plane, and it turned out to be 38". I set this distance, as best I could, on the distance scale for the 80mm normal lens. With an 80mm lens, especially at this close distance, the depth-of-field would be quite shallow, and focusing would be critical.
I would be using the LED desk lamp for my main light, and had already measured its light with my two 35mm, auto-exposure cameras. With 400 ISO film, the Canon AE-1 gave me 1/30 sec. at f 2.8; the EOS gave me 1/30 sec. at f 4. I set the shutter of the C33 at 1/30 sec., and the aperture between f 2.8 and f 4. I also verified this setting with the Gossen Scout 2 handheld light meter (selenium photocell), which I had learned from previous experiments must be set for 150 ASA/ISO instead of 400, to compensate for the LED light source.
These were challenging conditions, thanks to the use of vintage equipment. As it turned out, though, all frames were well focused and properly exposed.
The film I would be using was Ilford HP5+, which is one of my favorites, just as it was many years ago.
In the course of this selfie shoot, which was pretty repetitive, I became overconfident and forgot that the cable-release holds the shutter button down until you unlock the release. This caused two of my twelve exposures to be wasted.
Development was very straightforward, and presented no problem. Ilford, of course, does not tell you what developing time to use with Kodak D-76, but their ID-11 is essentially the same developer. I developed the film for six minutes at 72°F, and got consistently excellent negatives.
Here are some results from the medium-format selfie shoot:
The framing of this shot was guesswork, based on the amount of the taking lens that was in my line of sight. After slight cropping, the file size of the scanned negative is 6.66 MB.
I often wish that I had a more youthful model. The angle of the single, LED light was unforgiving, but I like the honesty and accuracy of the shot. I also like its luminosity, which I don't think you would get in a digital shot. All scans were done at 2400 dpi. This is the full, uncropped negative, and the file size is 7.14 MB.
Apart from artistic considerations, one advantage of an extremely high-contrast rendition is that the file size of the scan will be much smaller than that of a normal, gray-scale version. This scan, which was also moderately cropped, has a file size of 2.47 MB.
Next time, we'll attempt some comparisons between film and digital, and between 35mm and medium-format. In the meantime, shoot film if you can!
(to be continued)
Text and images Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.
