Medium Format… The way the pros shoot.

Falling prices in the used film camera market is now making professional camera systems accessible to students and serious amateur photographers. This allows people who couldn’t otherwise afford a professional camera system to buy one eBay for a small fraction of its original cost.

Such systems include high end 35mm SLR’s, 35mm rangefinder cameras, and medium format cameras. The latter provides higher image quality due to the large film that is used. For decades while consumers shot 35mm film, professionals used medium and large format film cameras. Large format requires bulky view cameras and substantial time to set up each shoot but for the most part medium format cameras work like larger 35mm cameras… You load a roll of film, and then use the built in light meter in the camera to choose and exposure and aperture combination, then you only to focus, point, and shoot.

The difference between 35mm and medium format is the size of the film. Medium format refers to “120” or “220” film, which typically produce a 2-1/4” X 2-1/4” film image. This is about four times the film area of a 35mm film image, enabling medium format cameras to produce better images than 35mm cameras. Many medium format cameras allow different lengths of film to be used for each shot allowing for different aspect ratios including wide panoramas. Common sizes for medium format images include 6×4.5, 6×6, 6×7, 6×9, 6×12, and 6×17 cm (although the size of the actual image might be slightly smaller to do small border around the frame).

Historically medium format cameras were sold at a high price making medium format a choice for professionals but financially out of reach of most consumers. But now things have changed. Many professional medium format photographers have retired or “went digital” when quality digital camera systems were introduced. This has left the market with thousands of orphaned high quality medium format cameras. The presents a great opportunity for young or budget minded photographers, a person can now a couple or a few hundred dollars for a camera that originally would cost as much as a car. Medium format film cameras are still competitive by today’s standards, only the best and most expensive digital cameras can match or exceed the quality or a good medium format camera, however one can buy a new car for the price of the best digital cameras. The most well-known and respected medium format cameras today are made by Hasselblad and Mamiya. The resolution obtained with a quality medium format camera can top the 50 Megapixel mark.

Even though film costs money, the money saved by buying medium format cameras and lenses on eBay camera easily outweighs the cost of the film. Professional digital cameras are so expensive that few people will ever save enough money on film to justify the added cost of buying new, professional quality digital systems over buying used medium format gear on eBay.

There are still many die hard professional medium format photographers who of course prefer medium format film over expensive digital cameras due to the look of film, and their history with their favorite cameras and lenses. The infamous photographer Platon Antoniou, who professionally goes by his first name Platon, used a medium format camera to photograph Vladimir Putin for the 2007 man of the year cover.

Working with the film:

Medium format film can be purchased online or in a few walk in retailers across the nation. Film photographers can shoot color slide (transparency) film, color negative film, or black white film. Negatives capture a high subject brightness range and are a little bit more forgiving to work with. Slides are generally a little sharper, finer grained, and feature more contrast putting more pop into your work. The film you decided to use is completely subjective, some photographers like one film of another while others use everything. You have to try it all and see what works for you.

After a roll of medium format film is shot it must be processed before the images can be viewed and used. Black and white film can be processed by just about anyone but if you are shooting color transparency (slide) or color negative film then you will need to have a lab process the images. It might cost somewhere around $2 to have a roll of medium format film

Traditionally negatives and slides were enlarged optically, but most commercial film labs have replaced their optical enlargers with digital imaging equipment. Before the film can be imaged digitally to create a photographic print, it must be scanned to convert it into a digital file. If you shoot black and white you can also look for a place where you could make your own black and white prints, perhaps at a local college or photography studio. Still it is a good idea to have your film scanned so that you images can be digitally preserved and shared.

When it comes to digitizing (scanning) your medium format film we feel that it makes the most sense to send it to us. We can produce very high quality scans of your medium format film; so that you can publish the images online, make digital prints, and manipulate the images in a program such as Photoshop (if desired). We have very expensive equipment that produces quality scans that are free of dust in a fast efficient manner. We can scan a whole roll at once or just a single frame if needed. We believe this to be the best option for every medium format photographer. Scanning your own film yourself would not be worth your time as our system is so fast and efficient that time that would be spent scanning your film would greatly outweigh any cost savings, plus the quality of our scans is higher then what can be obtained with consumer scanning equipment.