A New Friend...Mamiya C220 And I

So like I mentioned in the previous post, I've been borrowing KBH's Mamiya C220. A medium format 6x6 Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) film camera. Manufactured in the 70s and very early 80s, it is still in use today by some professionals and enthusiasts alike, and is a bit of an iconic camera.

TLR cameras are called so because they have TWO lenses. The top lens is linked to the viewfinder which you look down into from the top of the camera. This is used to frame your shot. The bottom lens is the one with the shutter that controls the exposure onto your film. You focus the lens by rotating a knob which pushes the bellows in and out, essentially moving the lenses closer or farther away from the camera body.

*EDIT: I decided to re-crop and tweak the colours of the above image to be similar to the first one...yes they all look the same, but they're not. Why bother you ask? Sometimes an artist just isn't satisfied with his/her work and is always trying to improve upon it. The never ending search for 'perfection'. Maybe now I like the version below over the first one.

So far I've only taken two rolls of film with it. Each roll of 120 film will give you 12 exposures (a roll of 220 will give you 24 I believe). I'm currently trying Fuji Velvia 50 and Kodak Tmax 400 (black and white) films. So far so good. The images are super crisp and because of the medium format size ("medium" meaning larger than normal 35mm film), if I wanted to make any prints, I could blow them up much LARGER. Medium format cameras are mostly used by photographers who need crisp detail and the ability to enlarge their prints...wedding photographers, fashion photographers, and landscape photographers for example.

These are my first real self portraits. They aren't actually taken with the Mamiya though, I used my Canon for these. I did try a few self portraits with it though in the bathroom mirror...they came out ok but since the film I'm using is mostly for daylight, the images were a little underexposed and colour cast. These however were my attempts at processing three images slightly different to give film style appearances. I like the first image the best (*see EDIT note).

Overall I really like using the C220. There's something somewhat 'romantic' or 'nostalgic' about using such an old school tactile film camera. The vertical viewfinder, twin lens, and the focusing bellows, they almost make you feel like a professional photographer :) And it also makes a nice conversation piece when you stop and ask strangers if you can take their photo with it! I think I'll add it to my shopping list, but who knows when or where I'll get to buy one that's in decent condition.

When I finish my first batch of film, I'll try to scan and post some of the photos.