Sunday, May 27, 2012

Film in Fashion Photography - Mamiya RZ67

As you all know I am a student (For now), and with the student budget I can't afford to buy my dream camera PhaseOne 645 IQ180.
Because I don't have the medium format + Digital back camera that doesn't mean I can't have a Medium format camera.
Old cameras now are a lot cheeper than they were back in their time thats why couple of months ago I bought my very own Mamiya RZ67 ProII.

However as I mentioned before digital is only very recent development in Photography.
Digital photography used in fashion photography since early 2000's
1990's were mostly Film and before that was Film and Film alone.

If you look at todays results and comparison in film and digital one can easily see Film can still easily compete with Digital.

However there are some drawbacks in film that makes the current Commercial/Fashion photographers go for digital and the biggest one of that is Film Slows the Workflow. 
There are still some really good photographers like Annie Leibovitz, Patrick Demarchelier, Ara Guler, Bill Cunningham and many more using film.

I am not going to sit and write about which one is better which one is the best. As a person who shoots film and digital I can say that I like them both and I'll use both of them as long as I can.

Since I shoot film in fashion as well as digital, I'd like to share what I go through while I am shooting film. 

Some people might know I am sometimes greedy on certain things when I know the real cost and thats the reason I don't give my negatives to develop to developing/processing Labs.
I process and scan the negatives my self and sometimes I find that faster since I use dip and dunk tanks to process negatives (dip and dunk tanks can take 9 medium format or 12 35mm film in one go).

However here is what happens when I shoot film.

Shoot  Day > Process negatives > Dry Negatives > Cut Negatives > File + Label > Scan > Photoshop > Print


And here is what happens when I shoot Digital. 

Shoot day (tethered  camera to laptop) > Photoshop > Print

But seing the result of the film makes you appreciate that you shot film. 


Photographer: Bugra Ergil (Bruce)
Makeup artist: Alice Bizarre
Model: Gina Harrison
Camera: Mamiya RZ67P ProII + Mamiya Sekor Z 127mm 
Film: New Kodak Portra 160 
Scanned with Hasselbald Flextight 1 scanner 


3 comments:

  1. Fabulous photo, Bruce! I'm thinking of getting into the Mamiya way of shooting - this has me convinced! Thanks! ;) - Mart.

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  2. later: I just succeeded in buying a perfect Mamiya RB67 Pro + 3 lens on Poland's 'eBay' today.

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    1. Thank you for showing interest in my blog Mart, Im happy that my blog post was helpful to you. Stay tuned I am planing on writing in my blog more often again. New posts that I am working on is about scanning film.

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