Shooting with Film – Mamiya C330s

I’ve had a nagging urge for some months now to shoot with film again. There’s something about shooting in digital that I feel a bit saturated by, it is not motivating me quite like it used to. And probably not helping is the fact that I have discovered a couple of really good film photography channels on youtube which are fuelling my filmic desires more!

So just before Christmas last year I broke out one of my old film cameras, I chose the Mamiya C330s as it is my only film camera that natively shoots square format, and shooting square is another thing I have had a nagging urge to do for a while as well!

In hindsight, the C330s was probably not the best choice, for a couple of reasons: First, it is a camera that gets a lot of attention. It’s a “Hey, look at me!” kind of camera, but I really do not like attracting attention when I am out in public places shooting. Second, I’m not a huge fan of twin lens reflex cameras, I much prefer single lens reflex cameras for handheld work for their choice of lenses, depth of field preview, simplicity using filters and their overall form factor.

The weather at the time I went out with the camera was exceedingly dull, grey and damp. I didn’t want to shoot on a tripod so went with a very fast and grainy film, Ilford Delta 3200. It’s a black and white film which is very simple to develop and I didn’t want to have to handle the complexities of colour film development just yet having not done it in such a long time.

To be honest, I spent more time getting to know the camera than I did actually shoot anything creatively. Getting used to using a hand-held exposure meter and composing with a ground glass screen with its reversed image was a bit of a challenge after the convenience of mirrorless digital EVF’s for so long.

I enjoyed the whole process, including developing and scanning the film afterwards, but the C330s wasn’t really for me on this occasion. So on my next trip I am going to take with me my Silvestri SLV, a multi-format technical film camera which is ideal for architecture and cityscapes. I figure if I am going to go through the hassle of shooting, processing and scanning film then I might as well shoot some really big 6×9 negatives and shoot colour as well as monochrome next time…

So my next “Shooting with Film” post will be about the Silvestri SLV, and I will go in to rather more detail in that post about the camera itself and the shooting process.