My First Oldie

I CAN'T quite describe how I felt when I peered DOWN into the large square view finder. It was glassy, strangely ethereal and somewhat like peering into a magical window. And the knowing that the three pound little gadget in my hands was older than I, has had a life of adventures separate from me and REQUIRED NO BATTERIES just blew me away. Oh my God, I now have my first medium format, 6x6 cm camera, and I am in heaven.

Could it get any more hard core? It doesn't even have an ASA adjustment setting. I still need a light meter and I can use the one in my SLR camera while I search for an external one. But with this camera, it's just me, the light and the film. Miscalculations can not be "photoshopped". But when I get the perfect image I can blow it up without worrying about the image getting grainy, and there are no worries about "noise" as there are in digital images.

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If there ever were spiritual retreats for photographers, I think a fully mechanical camera is the instrument of choice. Either that or a sun exposure process like the cyanotype would be ideal. An image process that leaves us little control, that is resistant to formulas for the perfect image, and has the capacity to produce bad images, but also astoundingly evocative "accidents". It's a metaphor for life. There isn't one ideal way to live a life. There aren't formulas and the standards of beauty and meaning are relative. Each life is unique. And when we embrace the concept that we are not always in control of the universe, sometimes beautiful, unique and magical things happen.

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My first medium format (implies that I'm getting a second one) is an early model of the Yashica-Mat 124. It's a twin lens reflex camera (fondly called a TLR), meaning, well it has two lenses: the viewing lens and the taking lens. This is one of those cameras with a view finder that let's you peer into it looking down. I believe it's called a waist view. But the beauty of the medium format is that it takes larger negatives. More than twice the size of the 35 mm film that we're used to. The result is clearer enlargements and breathtaking detail (and if detail is important in your image, there still is the large format camera to consider). My camera yields a 6x6 cm image on the film. I like composing on a square frame and this is one more reason some photographers are infatuated with the format.