A few months ago a very kind gentleman and I started a conversation about photography and specifically some of the cameras that we had shot through out the years. I mentioned to him that in the past I had owned a Mamiya TLR C220 with a 135 mm telephoto lens. He told me that he had two of them and would give me one of them. I of course hesitated in believing him since these cameras in good working condition tend to be a bit costly even though that most of them are over 30 years old. But sure enough withing a couple of days he showed up with an old camera case which once opened it revealed its contents of a beautifully preserved Mamiya with a 80 mm f2.8 lens, instruction manual and a 522 Sunpack flash. I was totally taken aback by his generosity and the way he kept his word. He told me that it was my to keep but to never sell it. I promised him that it will become part of my collection and first chance I would have I was going to be shooting some film with it.
I remember that I had an old Gossen Lunasix light meter which only needed batteries. It took me a while to find the correct batteries and a roll of 120 film which I purchased at an old camera repair store in the pinecrest area. The film I purchased is a roll of Konica 160 color film which seems to be a bit expired 🙂 which accounts for peculiar color that the images after developing have. I have included some of the images from this first roll some in color others in black and white. The lens seems to be sharp and clean of any interior unwanted large dust particles. The Lunasix seems to be very much in the ball park in obtaining the correct exposure with a bit maybe underexposure in some of the frames.
There is a quality about film that truly can’t be duplicated by digital, the tactical and organic aspects. The richness of the texture. It really is difficult to explain but it just seems to place you in the mind set of taking your time. You have to go back to basics of exposure and composition especially with these TLR cameras because you are only give 12 or maximum 24 exposures per roll. To be more precise in the composition in the exposure. You can’t be chimping with film you just have to know what is happening with the exposure because there is no preview arrow on these cameras or a trash button to push! Here are a few of the images including the first which is the camera itself:
