Medium Format On My Back: The Prep
Topslakr March 7th, 2011
I’ve never been excited about photography in a studio setting. A lot of people enjoy working in a studio but I’d much rather be shooting landscapes, hiking through the woods or wandering through a local fair. When I started considering a medium format camera it was always in the context of taking it with me to interesting places. Since hiking with the camera was my plan from the start I was careful to seek out a medium format camera known for it’s relative portability.
The Mamiya 645 Pro, the medium format camera I’ve chosen, is on the smaller side of things in the medium format world. Unlike the 35mm camera world, medium format cameras shoot in a variety of standard sizes. A 35mm camera (almost) always shoots a frame that is 24mm x 36mm. Medium format cameras though are built to shoot one of several standard sizes usually measured in centimeters, such as 6cm x 9cm, or 6cm x 6cm. The Mamiya 645 shoots a frame that is 6cm x 4.5cm, hence it’s name (It’s not uncommon for a medium format camera name to also contain it’s frame size). With my camera shooting the smallest standard size on medium format film, the camera can be a lot smaller and lighter than something designed to shoot a much larger frame. Obviously I lose out on the really massive negatives, but the 645 still produces a frame 3x the size of a 35mm camera and it’s more than 7x larger than the sensor on my Nikon D7000.