I knew it had to happen soon. Serious photography is just not possible without coming back to the roots, the deliberate process of using larger format cameras. This day would not have come today if not for the constant inspiration from my friend and mentor photographer Francesco Gallarotti.
I am lucky to have a store like Keeble & Schuchat near me. They are a rental heaven, and I can use a medium format for a song.
So I picked up a Hasselblad 503CW with A12 back (6×6) and 80mm/2.8 Planar lens today morning. They even sacrificed a film roll just to show me how to load and remove film from the back. I am now very impressed by their attitude and courtesy.
First stop, Stanford university. Midday sun and architectures make quite contrasty scenes and I took the advantage of it for the Ilford FP4+ I put in. Every shot was metered by my 5D and taken on the tripod. It was a dramatically different process. Each of the 12 frames counts on a 120 roll. No guesswork, no assumptions. I missed having a light meter. Carrying my camera bag over and above the hassy was a bit painful for the back, not to mention the bogen tripod. I walked around a lot but finishing the roll was far from easy. Stumbled upon a large format photography workshop and even got a chance to look at the ground glass of a wooden LF view camera using a black cloth ! Fantastic. I left stanford after an hour of shooting with a few frames still left on the first roll.
Next destination, San Francisco, of course. But stopped by the golden gate national cemetery, it always looked striking from the 280. Enjoyed the peace and serenity of the place and was able to finish the roll.
San Francisco never ceases to amaze me. At the same time it pisses me every time I go there, for several reasons. The near impossibility to park on a road, the GPS losing the satellite reception often, and the constant hunt for a restroom in the bone chilling wind even in the middle of May !!! Today being a special day I decided to tolerate everything I mentioned above. But like salt on a wound, when I finally parked near Lombard street to shoot the classic photo of the cable car against the backdrop of the bay, I ended up waiting 45 minutes before someone told me the cable car was broken. I barely started the 2nd roll and had a lot of expectations for the day. But the rest of the sunlight got wasted just driving around and finding a space to park. No such luck. Parked near chinatown to eat when the daylight was already dim and I barely had any energy left.
I still have two more bw and one slide roll to finish tomorrow. Looking forward to an early start and a productive day ahead.
Medium format rocks. There is nothing like it. There is a surreal quality in the view through the hassalblad’s waist level finder. It looks 3D yet it helps frame a 2D image much better than a 35mm viewfinder. The square format makes everything look just right. I wonder how I will be able to keep using 35mm film. I am pretty sure I will just switch to MF, atleast for the bw negs. Since I have a 35mm slide projector, I might just keep shooting slides in 35mm.
