Your medium format shoots square.

One or two of mine shoot square as well, but far more of mine shoot rectangular - primarily 6x7cm and 6x9cm!

35mm is not relevant to this discussion, but there's no reason it couldn't shoot square if someone made a camera to do it!

That's my point... 35mm is not an alternative because it doesn't meet one of my requirements.. square photos. I got a camera/film style that matches what I wanted to achieve (take decent quality, not too expensive, square photos)... hence, medium format. That some or even many medium format cameras can take rectangular photos is entirely irrelevant.

To, perhaps, end this.. Thanks for the film recommendations. I'll be sure to try some of them out. I just picked up my first roll of colour film .. Fuji Pro400H I think. We'll see how that goes. Actually, now that I've just read up on that film, I think I might have just put high octane fuel into a moped.

Posted by yokes That's my point... 35mm is not an alternative because it doesn't meet one of my requirements.. square photos.

Crop.

But that wastes film. Besides.. it just never feels.. right.

Exactly!

Posted by micro But that wastes film. Besides.. it just never feels.. right.

Posted by micro But that wastes film. Besides.. it just never feels.. right.

Posted by yokes That's my point... 35mm is not an alternative because it doesn't meet one of my requirements.. square photos. I got a camera/film style that matches what I wanted to achieve (take decent quality, not too expensive, square photos)... hence, medium format.

I fail to understand this logic. If every picture on a 36 frame, 35mm roll was cropped to 24x24mm you would "lose" about 103square cm of film. This is equvalent to less than 3 6x6 MF shots. I bet all 12 photos that come out of that lubitel are usable. Furthermore, I really would not consider the cropping to be a waste of film. It gives you more control of what can be cropped...selecting the better parts of the image. Who knows...perhaps you will find a rectangular photo you like.

Besides, pretty sure in the end MF is more expensive shot to shot than 35mm.

To get back on topic...I shot tri-x in an old mechanical 6x6 folder this weekend, and was pretty happy with the results.

Thanks for the film recommendation.. I'll be on the lookout for that and give a roll a try.

I have my digital camera for when I want to shoot rectangular photos or when I'm worried about shot-to-shot costs. Of course I could just crop it down. And then I could also use auto levels on it, paint out inperfections, and any number of other post-processing techniques. But sometimes I'd rather just have a nice square photo right out of the camera.. I'm not sure what is difficult about this.

Posted by msb I fail to understand this logic. If every picture on a 36 frame, 35mm roll was cropped to 24x24mm you would "lose" about 103square cm of film. This is equvalent to less than 3 6x6 MF shots. I bet all 12 photos that come out of that lubitel are usable. Furthermore, I really would not consider the cropping to be a waste of film. It gives you more control of what can be cropped...selecting the better parts of the image. Who knows...perhaps you will find a rectangular photo you like. Besides, pretty sure in the end MF is more expensive shot to shot than 35mm. To get back on topic...I shot tri-x in an old mechanical 6x6 folder this weekend, and was pretty happy with the results.

For colour, I have shot Reala through my Yashica 24 with excellent results.

For black & white, Efke R25 is my film of choice. I even run it through a period Ikonta 6x6 folder, just to "keep it real".

HP5 and FP4 are nice for black and white.

My favourite film that I've had cross-processed so far was expired Velvia 50. It was rich in turquoise and green, very cool looking. If anybody is interested in seeing what it looks like, I'll post a picture.

In the color world, I specificly use kodak e200. I unfortunately have you use 120, and can't use 220 cause of my came. E200 is Transparent film, like 35mm slide film. With them you get more true colors and last long. Also, if you are scanning you film, they are perfect. Alot easier to attempting to get the color correct....

I'm partial to Portra 400VC for color and Tri-X for B&W. What I was taught on, kinda stuck with me.

Posted by EatsTooMuchJam but there's no reason it couldn't shoot square if someone made a camera to do it!

Im about to do that , recently i bought a 126 (square frame) kodak instamatic old camera from a salvation army , it feels a lot like a brick , looks like a brick and is as heavy as a brick . seeing that there hardly any 126 film left around , and seeing that the shutter and diaphragm on the camera still works , i have started to figure out a way to make a 35mm film work inside that camera . So far i figured a way to ge the spindles of 35 mm film to fit inside and to sort of turn so i can reel the film , but i have yet to by some cheap film that i would expose to light to see if my idea works , and that should give me square frames on a 35 mm film .


thats the exact model that i have now http://www.nwmangu.../Kodak/I704-1.html

Posted by EatsTooMuchJam Yes. That is soft. A better MF camera would have improved it by having better sharpness among other things. It's a little hard to tell with that particular picture since there isn't a whole lot of fine detail anyway. Also, that's shrunk down and resized presumably. I'll post a 100% crop from one of my scans when I get home later.

by the way , some medium format toy cameras can be quite sharp compared to others. I shot a 15s nightshot with a Holga mf toycamera (all plastic, plastic lens) and it came out sharper than i expected.

Below is a crop at 100 % of a 300 DPI scan of that picture i took with the holga. the print was on fiber base paper.

click to view

edit: second picture reuploaded with "signature" on it.

I like Tri-X 320 and Agfa APX-25. I still have a couple of dozens of apx-25 in 120 and 35mm in the freezer for future use!

kodak t max 400 for B&W

fuji superia 100 CN film

fuji velvia or kodak 100VS for slide film

and im not too into the 6x6 format, 6x7 is my favorite