Digging out the old vinyl records...

So my friend at JR Photography loaned me his Yashica Mat 124 G medium format TLR to play with. It's been probably a good 20 years since I shot medium format film so I thought I would give it a try.

Much of my curiosity is fuelled by the idea of shots where I'm always trying to catch various depth of field effects, and really nothing replaces a large objective and larger format.

I love my Canon 5DMk2 of course, but there's just something so raw about shooting in analog.

Back in the late 80's I majored in Visual Communications and also studied a minor in photography at the ACAD. I had been taking photos since I was 12, and before I went to art college I had even considered it as a career as I spent a lot of time photographing my girlfriend at the time.

I spent a good portion of my studies in medium format when I went to college, shooting mostly on Mamyias and the odd Hasselblad. I spent two years at it, but never decided to take it on as a major. Somewhere along the line I lost the passion for it and for the most part never really shot a lot for years. During that time I always appreciated 4x5 and medium format work from photographers that I hired, but never picked it up again for some time.

Fast forward to 2011. I shots my first roll of 120 since 1991 and was pleasantly amused by the shots I produced. I'm a little rusty with shooting film and metering with a handheld meter, but I'm adjusting to it quickly, and although there were a few focusing errors on the roll, I got a good handful of pleasing images off of it.

These scans are not the greatest, but they're a quick preview of my latest return to medium format. I would love to get my hands on a digital medium format one day, but they are priced out of my reach (for now).

In the meantime, I also picked up a Mamiya M645 for a great deal with two lenses, and shot some colour shots with it and looking forward to how those will turn out. I will be uploading those and sharing them here on my blog when I review them.

I had taken some shots side by side with my Olympus Pen E-P3 with the TLR at the same time so it will be an interesting comparison to see how old technology matches up against newer technology.