Before I enter into the details, I must say: Wow!
I always knew shooting on medium format would be a totally different experience and all I can say after the first few frames is thank God that everything I learned from was film biased. Everything I've done since 2005 is digital and I've all but completely forgotten how different the workflow is.
The first issue is that film's expensive. Even though I managed to get all of them for under £3 a roll, it's still going to total about £15+ a roll after processing and scanning. Therefore, each and every frame is precious to me. These 12 rolls might very well be the only ones I get for a long, long time and I want to do my absolute best to make it a one shot, one kill scenario. Ideally that would translate into 180 different frames of film. There's only one real way of doing this and that is to take test shots before hand to make absolute sure everything is right. In an ideal world, this can be accomplished with Polaroids (or rather Fuji Instax nowadays); however, that stuffs expensive too, so it's the dSLR that substitutes in this case.
For the shot I'm going to talk about here, I used a two light set-up to light a still-life of a Raspberry Tart procured from a continental market in Barnsley the same day.
The first step was to get a rough position of the tart on the mirror so I had a starting point to begin lighting it. Happy with what I was seeing framing wise, I had a problem with the wooden frame of the mirror dissecting the frame. This was fixed simply by adding two sheets of A3 printer paper in a curve shape against and up from the mirror in an attempt to replicate a white seamless background. This wasn't so perfect. It took a fair while to get them positioned so there were no visible lines or edges. Once I did; however, everything was smooth sailing for more or less the first time ever!
The first step in lighting the pastry, was to set up the background/rim light. For this, I pointed a bare bulb strobe into a V-flat which was then directed at the white wall behind. Cue test shot. (In the future, I will remember to get ALL of the test shots off of the memory card before formatting :S )
I should point out here, after last week's lesson on apertures and shutter speeds, I decided to only work in full stops with the Mamiya. The reasons for this are to place myself under limitations so as to force myself to work the scene and the lighting around the camera rather than the other way around. Forcing myself to reinforce and practice technique this way can only serve to help me to operate technically and creatively in tricky situations in the future. The second reason is simply ease. The aperture ring on the fully manual lens on the Mamiya only displays full stops and it conveniently clicks into place at each one. Doing this also leaves little room for idiotic error, thus reducing the chances of wasting precious film.
Back to the test shot. A quick shot at f/4 revealed that I got it exactly how I wanted the first time. That doesn't happen very often, so I carried on rather pleased! The second light was fitted with a white umbrella high and to camera right. Test shot 2. Perfect. OMG!
Happy, it was time to bring in the Mamiya. Now, working with such a small subject, my choice of lens for the test shots was my beloved 50mm f/2.5 Macro. This immediately posed another problem. The minimum focusing distance of the macro lens is about 2 inches, whilst on the Mamiya's 80mm lens, it's just shy of 3 feet. Though I was aware this was going to happen, I didn't give it pause and carried on anyway. Lesson learned. The whole set up was for a tightly framed closeup of a tart and it's reflection. The final image on film will have to be cropped very significantly to fulfil my initial intent. This isn't exactly a problem as such, but I feel it's a waste of a lot of precious real estate on the huge negative.
My other slight issue with the 645 was with the focusing. Having only worked with 35mm SLRs and APS-C dSLR's, the split focusing screen was completely alien to me. I figured out how it worked pretty quickly, but I still found it really difficult. After having all the test shots done, it must have taken me nearly 10 minutes to get to a point where I was daring enough to actually push the shutter. I can only assume and hope this will change with practice.
All in all, I'm still very much looking forward to seeing the final result when the film gets back. So I can run a comparison, this is how I would have retouched the shot had I been shooting digitally:
and this is what it looks like run through Alien Skin's Exposure 3 set to simulate the characteristics of Portra 160VC.
If I've done everything right, hopefully this is how the print will look when it comes back to me!
Well, three frames down 177 to go!!
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