My first Film experience

If you followed me on Instagram or Twitter you might have noticed that inspired by some photographers I'm in contact with and based on my own interests that actually came up using VSCO Film for Digital Photography I bought a medium format film camera together with a 80mm F2.8 standard lens. For the beginning this should be enough to have some fun because this "beast" is really heavy and built like a tank but it actually has the best viewfinder I've ever used in my short life. It's way better than the 5D viewfinder and it's brighter, too.

So when I bought the camera, the weather kept staying really bad for the following weeks. I didn't want to waste some film shots on stupid weather but I always had in mind that some day I really needed to bring the camera out into the fields.

I'm staying at home at the moment for the exams-period at university and there isn't really any big city life around but when I close the door behind me, I'm actually standing in the middle of pure nature.

So one day, while I was studying for my last exam and wanted to take a short break, and instead of doing sports, I selected one film and went out for a one hour photography break. On this day I took a roll of Fuji Reala 100 with me. I bought it a few days before, knowing that it was discontinued last year but it was a sunny day and I wanted to take some shots at wide open apertures to see how the 80mm looks like on medium format film. Actually it's a 50mm equivalent compared to 35mm film. My negatives are 6cm x 4.5cm big, so it's called a 645 camera.

I'm really happy with the results I got back today after it took a little bit more than one week to get them developed and scanned. In the near future I want to scan the negatives myself, so I have to invest in some good scanning equipment. This time I wanted some reference for low-res scans like my lab offered me. C-41 developing and scanning for 13x18cm at 300dpi was 20€. Developing only is just 5€, so much more affordable if you scan the film yourself.

I cropped the black film frame away on most of them as they didn't scan the whole frame with the Fuji imprint. The originals are at about 2515 x 1830 Pixel. Enough for web usage I think but decide for yourself.

The last one is the actual film shot of the photo I made through the viewfinder using my iPhone on the first photo of this post, just to show you how good it already looks like through the viewfinder before you press the shutter release. On 35mm DSLR's I'm used not to see the real depth of field below F2.8 if you're using a 50 F1.4 for example. I then normally switch into liveview mode to see how thin it really is. 80mm F2.8 on medium format 6x4.5cm has almost a depth of field like 50mm F1.8 on 35mm but in this camera, you really see how strong the out of focus part is and that's the reason why it gives you an almost 3D impression while looking through the viewfinder.

I hope you liked the results of my little film adventure!

Martin