First posted 2 June 2009

I have just returned from a weeks break in Brittany, France. I couldn’t resist doing lots of landscapes and portraits there, so I now have a much bigger backlog of films to process. I shot Ilford HP5 120 rated 200 ISO and Ilford FP4 120 rated 50 ISO. I only took medium format on this trip (and a digi compact for family snaps and short video), because there wasn’t enough room in the car for the big stuff. I took a Yashicamat 124 G 6×6 cm and a Pentax 6×7 cm with two lenses, standard and wide.

I have been pretty single minded about large format and particularly 10×8 for the last year, but I have a real affection for square medium format. It gives high quality, coupled with ease of use. The 5×4 and the 10×8 are heavy, cumbersome and slow cameras to use and we offset that inconvenience with the excellent quality that they provide, but if you only plan to print to 10×8, medium format is a great choice.

Each type of camera that we as photographers choose, has its own special method of use. Each different viewfinder contributes something to the shooting experience and thus the final result. Large format images are viewed upside down and for those who are new to them, they are confusing to use.

6×6 cameras mostly have a left/right reversal of the image in the viewer which is odd to the beginner, but after a while, I believe this adds to the result. Arriving at a scene and pointing the camera in the general direction, I glance down at the screen and see the arrangements of shapes and tones in a totally different way. I then move the camera around a little whilst looking through the viewfinder and check if a slightly different composition would be an improvement. Looking at the image reversed through the viewfinder gives me visual surprises and often I see a shot which I had not considered when looking around with my eyes. This is a special way to compose, and working this way means that the final print often surprises me.

This happened with the shot below and I deliberately put the focus at the back of the picture to draw the viewers eye to the black cow in the top right.

So I suppose what I am trying to say is that there is still very high quality from a medium format negative and the cameras are so much easier to use. (Well why didn’t you just say that at the beginning then? ).