I love old cameras. Usually I prefer to shoot medium format film, and always in black and white. Ebay is a great place to find old cameras, and if you know what you're looking for you can also get some great deals. Recently I purchased a Mamiya Press View 6 x 9 camera. With 120 size film I can get eight images per roll. When I first attempted to load film into the camera I followed procedures similar to other medium format cameras, but the spacing between the frames was really messed up. I then took another roll of film and experimented exposing the film, re-rolling it, and exposing it again several times until I could see the pattern of how the camera worked. I discovered several little quirks about the camera, So I made a short video to explain exactly how to load this type of film back.
Once I managed to load the camera correctly it was really fun to photograph things. This particular camera has a rangefinder. When you look through the viewfinder there is a smaller square in the middle of the few that is amber colored. As you focus the camera the Amber Square Will show a different image then the image at large, And by matching up the two images the subject is in focus. No autofocus on this camera! There is also no automatic winder or shutter activation. Every time you wish to take an image you have to activate the shutter and check the shutter speed and aperture to see that they match whatever measurements you have taken. There's also a dark slide on the phone back that has to be removed before you can take pictures… However, you can click to shutter without removing the dark side and that would result in no image. Another complication is that when you activate the shutter you can then take a picture that process is separate from advancing the film, so you could possibly advance the film over and over again without taking a picture or in like fashion you could taken several photos on a single frame of film. If you wish one exposure on one frame you need to concentrate on advancing the film, activating the shutter and exposing that frame, and immediately advancing to the next frame. It's a lot of manual steps, and it's easy to mess it up and double expose of frame or advance of frame thinking you've taken a picture when you haven’t?
So, in talking to students about this process of using film cameras instead of digital there is a consensus that it is much more complicated and much slower. There is less of a consensus on whether that's good or not? I'm going to come down on the side that it's great to take time to be deliberate and create images that are thoughtful and intentional. In the digital age it's so easy to shoot lots and lots of images, but that's no guarantee that any of them will be good! Shooting with film cameras is a useful discipline to help train your photographic vision. Often there is no autofocus, sometimes there isn’t even a built-in light meter, and the number of images on one roll of film is quite limited. Taking a lot of bad images can never add up to one good image, and yes, it is possible to miss photos because of how much slower it is to operate a film camera. I have chosen to use film cameras whenever possible for the sheer joy of it! And this old Mamiya 6 x 9 is certainly fun!
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