Going Old School

Here are some of the photos from my new (to me) 40 year old Yashica medium format TLR camera. They are scans from negatives that are over 3 times the size of a regular 35 mm photo. I like the results, but have some things to work out. Here are a few of the first scans. I’m sure there will be more later!

A few things I noticed using the TLR:

You can’t look at the view screen and see the shot you just took! It seems they didn’t have lcds back in the 60s! Who would have thought that?
It takes a while to get the prints back. Like 10 days or so to send them out and get them back.
Shooting and developing medium format film is not cheap. I figure it’s on the order of a dollar a shot to take and develop the photos. Therefore, it’s good to take my time doing the shoot, and making sure I get it right, before I click the shutter!
View Screens are challenging to use. If you look into the screen, its down low so its a strange angle to be looking, and you have to look into them just right. Especially if you have glasses.
There’s a lot to remember every shot. Is the shutter speed right? The aperture? Can you see the stupid little #s? Did you advance the film? Are you sure?
It’s a whole thing to load and unload the film. Nothing painful, but it’s not just popping a digital memory card and checking the batteries.
There are no batteries in the camera.
Waiting for the film to come back is a character building thing. Character building things are never fun!
Scanning is slow and labor intensive. And makes big files ~200 megs per photo!

A detail from the shot below.