Over the years, in film I’ve have shot mainly in 35mm, but in the late 90’s, just prior to the onslaught of digital, I moved to medium format and then briefly to 5x4 film.
Almost 2 decades after switching to digital, and after a couple of years reflection, I realise now that my landscape photography, or at least my satisfaction with it, reached a height during those medium format years. Simply put, my ‘hit-rate’ (i.e. proportion of images I was happy with) has never been as high as it was from a roll of 120 film.
This is not based on the film format or quality, it’s about the whole end-to-end process. In fact, I am more than satisfied with the print quality I can achieve from my current digital cameras.
So what is it about my ‘medium format years’ that I value?
Is this image worth it?
The physical and financial effort of loading film into the camera, and the following processing effort and costs, mean that there was always a consideration of ‘is this shot worth it?’, and following on from that, ‘if it’s not, how can it be improved so it is worthwhile?’. That might mean shifting position a little, waiting for better light, moving on to another composition, or even coming back at another time.
Of course, in the digital world we have already invested in the equipment, and pressing the shutter one more time, or ten thousand times more, costs us nothing. Digital can make us lazy, if we let it.
Keep It Steady, Stupid
I would never, ever have considered not using a tripod when shooting MF or 5x4. Further more, that would be a pretty beefy tripod, to which would be attached a substantial head, and the camera operated via a cable release, with the mirror operated before the shutter.
Basically, to extract the maximum image quality from any imaging device, film or digital, you must ensure the camera cannot shift during the exposure. I learned this hard lesson when I started to shoot 36MP (Nikon D800) alongside 24MP (Nikon D3x). For some reason the D800 image quality did not seem up there with the D3x. Over time I learned that the D800 had a pretty clunky shutter (which Nikon vastly improved in the D810) and need to be locked down hard to get near the D3x for sharpness and detail. The D3x on the other hand, was more tolerant of ‘sloppy’ technique, possibly due to the extra mass of it’s large ‘professional’ body. I go into more detail in this post.
Get Ahead and Go Places
I mentioned heads above, and during those MF years I mostly used a geared head. When I moved to digital, this seemed like over-kill (and probably was for my first 6MP DSLR), so along came a succession of ball-heads.
Nothing wrong with a quality ball-head, but for landscapes a geared head just gives you that extra precision, slows you down and avoids the distraction of adjusting one way, over-shooting or the heading shifting as you lock it, and having to re-adjust. Basically, in this situation, you are now thinking about your equipment more than the image.
A geared head on the other hand, lets you make tiny incremental adjustments in one axis without upsetting the orientation in the other two axis. So now your attention is on the composition, not working around the limitations of your head.
I have more to say about heads here and here.
Slow is Smooth
If you hadn’t picked up on it yet, shooting ‘Medium Format’ for me is all about slowing down, and putting all your energy and effort into getting the most satisfying image. Part of this is your approach, but part of it is removing anything that doesn’t add to the creative process. That might mean practicing so that operating your equipment is second-nature, but it might also mean removing, replacing or upgrading items that get in your way or are distracting.
Basically I want my kit to just work, and not get in my way. I don’t want to step out of a creative ‘zen’ moment or ‘flow-state’ in order to think about what knob adjusts what, how to tighten that clamp or this adjuster.
That stands for tripods, heads, filters, even my camera bag, and of course cameras and lenses themselves.
Think of it like this: in elite sports even marginal gains can make the difference between winning and losing; a world record or also-ran. So, everything is analysed and refined to make those marginal gains.
That’s exactly what I am aiming for - removing all the ‘noise’ that intrudes on the creative process. Nirvana for me would be to setup my tripod, mount camera and lens without conscious thought whilst fully engaging on the scene in front of me.
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