Chris and I got together last Saturday to take some pictures. It was raining pretty vigorously off and on, so we ended up just walking over to the Botanical Gardens, which are right near my apartment but which I don’t visit nearly enough. Between the two of us we were carrying enough photo gear that the person at the desk asked if we were there to photograph whatever event they were holding there that evening.

I took the D200, of course, and the Panasonic, but Chris had the more interesting setup (at least in this digital day and age), a Mamiya 645AFD (or Mama-mia! as I thought when I first saw the thing) and a couple of Holgas along with his digital Olympus P&S.

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We ended up pretty much switching cameras; Chris spent most of the time shooting with the D200, and I ran about a roll and a half through the Mamiya. I’m pretty much a child of digital as far as photography goes, so shooting medium format film was a pretty interesting experience for me. It’s a much slower, more cumbersome process, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. The Mamiya is enormous; it makes the D200 look tiny by comparison, and the medium format lenses are out of necessity larger than their 35mm equivalents. The extra weight and bulk made me quite glad I’d taken the tripod along.

The Mamiya has autofocus, but to be honest, coming from the Nikon it kind of sucks. One AF point, and it tended to hunt around in the somewhat dim light in the gardens. It more than made up for it though with the fact that manually focussing was a treat compared to digital SLRs. The viewfinder is huge and bright, and it’s easy to see what you’re doing. It’s kind of like focussing on a 4×6 print instead of through a keyhole. Very nice.

The other thing that tends to slow you down with film (especially medium format) is that while on digital shots (and mistakes) are effectively free, you’re looking at a significant fraction of a dollar per frame with this much film. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. It encourages you choose your shots more carefully, and spend more time getting everything right the first time rather than checking the screen on the back and trying again if it’s wrong.

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All in all, as far as the film-vs-digital debate goes, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. Chris liked the immediacy and ability to experiment that comes with the D200, and I liked the more methodical working method and thoughtfulness that the Mamiya encourages. Of course the real advantage to the medium format camera is that a 6×4.5 cm chunk of film can record a lot more detail than even the 10MPix sensor in the Nikon. The real disadvantage was obvious though when I had to wait until the middle of the week to see what I’d shot…

I’m definitely interested in adding some film gear to my arsenal though. If anybody’s got an old Nikon film body they’re looking to get rid of let me know. I’ll definitely be trawling through Ebay over the next few months.

As far as the Holgas go, that’s a whole different story for another time…