Really loved my 500CM / Planar 80mm and DIY B&W at home but 3rd party developing & scanning medium-format have become so expensive that it forced me to abandon this meditative hobby. Wish someone could take a stab and find a solution to make it affordable again.
If you have a digital camera (SLR or mirrorless), which most people who shoot film do, you also have an excellent scanner. I scan 35mm, 120, and 4x5 with a DSLR, inverted tripod, and macro lens. The results are better than any flatbed scanner.
Use a rocket or canned air to keep the dust off, and a sheet of anti-newton glass to keep the film flat and focused while scanning.
Developing B&W at home is economical if you use a shelf-stable developer (I like Kodak HC-110, a half-open bottle keeps for years) and fixer (Ilford Rapid). Per-roll developing cost is between 50¢ and $1.
I shoot a few rolls and throw them in a big Paterson tank. Two rolls of film take 30 min to develop and 15 min to scan. Not much longer than the time to drive round trip to the photo lab.
No darkroom necessary- I load film in a dark bag. Post-process the scans in Lightroom or Darktable. Batch-processing means it's pretty fast. If I want to make prints, either I send out the digital positive to ProDPI or I rent time at the community darkroom.
Glad it’s working for you, but part of this doesn’t make any sense to me. One of the big selling point of medium format is how much more resolution and detail you can capture than if you used 35mm. You are suggesting applying a 35mm system resolution at best being applied in a lossy manner.
I’m sure you can get well focused results in this way, it it sounds like you are throwing away most of your resolution. Am I missing something? Are you stitching I ages together? If so how are you managing positioning?
If I haven’t missed something: if you compared this to a digital back on a ’blad with otherwise the same image and blew them up I expect the difference would be blindingly obvious.
6x6 film captured much more detail than 35mm film. But modern digital cameras of "35mm frame" are way beyond this, that's why nobody uses them with lenses from last century. So it's not crazy to hope that using one as a scanner (which is ideal conditions) might not leave much detail behind, from negatives shot on an old Hasselblad.
> But modern digital cameras of "35mm frame" are way beyond this, that's why nobody uses them with lenses from last century.
I would be really interested in hearing more about this (noob in this area). Are you saying the old Nikon / Canon lenses from 90s are a bad choice for modern DSLRs from these companies, or did I completely misunderstand you? If so, why is that?
Newer digital sensors can resolve a higher 'resolution' than 35mm film.
Using an older lens with a camera sporting a 20+ MP sensor will give you less sharp results than a similar new lens. But the image will be no worse than that old lens shooting film. And the lens will be much cheaper!
If you (or others) like the results, the technical details do not matter.
Modern 35mm frame sensors still aren’t anywhere near the best MF film can do, though, unless things have changed radically in the last few years? I mean in spatial resolution, specifically. I must admit I haven’t paid attention for the last handful of years.
That is the case, and a bit of quick googling suggests to a greater degree than I expected (depending on film and optics I saw estimated ranges of MF being able to resolve the equivalent of 80 to as much as 150 megapixels! I guess it makes sense that modern medium-format digital backs are often in that kind of range).
If a digital SLR and a light table can get you enough resolution for what you want to use the images for though, that's fine. You could use that for most of your images and then get the ones you want to print really large professionally scanned later.
I recently made a 60"x48" print from a 4x5 negative scanned with a Epson V700 scanner. You're simply not going to get that kind of resolution with a DSLR. I don't doubt you get good results with your setup, but your statement that "the results are better than any flatbed scanner" is nonsense.
For film negatives this scanner will get about 2300 dpi according to [0]. A DSLR with 24 megapixel will get the ~4000 dpi form a 35mm negative in a fraction of the time.
A 4x5" negative takes 33 minutes to scan with 2400 dpi. In this time I can make several photos and stitch them together do some spot removal and will get a better quality.
The DSLR+adapter solution does sound more convincing to me, with the right lens, right sensor and settings. Correcting distortions should be a tractable.
One problem with many flatbed scanners (not all of them and not the film scanners) is that they illuminate the film/object from the same side as the sensor, so the light has to travel and bounce more, creating more chances of stray light.
Here are some figures off the top of my head, as a user of Hasselblad V (film) systems for approaching 15 years. All the work on my site (link in "about" page) is shot with Hasselblad film cameras. Mostly with the 6x6 V cameras.
A top spec Epson flatbed+negative scanner will cost you in the region of $500. This will allow you to scan medium format film at a quality more than adequate for web stuff and also for printing up to 50x50cm.
Film costs are now in the region of $7 per roll for quality B&W and $15 per roll for quality colour. That's good stuff by the likes of Ilford and Kodak.
Development of B&W is trivial to do at home, and will cost you around $3 per roll. You can economise by reusing chemicals or by doubling up (two rolls in a tank for example) to bring this down to $1 per roll. Chemicals will last in the region of one year if stored in air tight light proof containers.
Development of colour is slightly more involved but can still be done for around $5 per roll.
Printing is where the expense comes at you. Depending on paper, sizes, inks, etc, this can set you back anything from $5 per print for a cheap mass-market lab style print for 20x20cm, to $30 if the inks/paper are better.
All in all I don't think it's that much more expensive than using a digital camera. You shoot less, you shoot different photos, you see different things. I average around 50 rolls per year through my Hasselblad.
Good compilation! I’ve been shooting digital-only for the last 12 years and tried 35mm film last year. Now my medium format itch became so bad that I ended up buying a Hassy with the 80mm lens to learn new (or old?) things. The mechanical feel of a Hassy is awesome compared to new DSLRs and mirrorless. Everything is mechanically coupled and there’s nothing unnecessary. Just the focus, aperture and shutter speed settings on the lens, mirror lockup button and the actual shutter button and that’s it. This forces me to think about more and planning more before pressing the button.
Also, people have been talking here about developing the negatives itself to minimise the cost. Ended up making a kind of compromise: bought Epson v850 flatbed scanner and taking the film-rolls for development company to get the negatives. The scanners pays for itself really quickly as here one 120 film roll scanning costs 16 euros :D
I think skate photographers got early exposure medium format and to the Hasselblad brand itself. Growing up watching Atiba and Blabac creeping into video frames with their Zeiss 30’s – and all the square framed iconic shots made the hassy almost requisite.
It looks like you cut your teeth a little bit later than my generation. When we were shooting, digital was just dawning, and all of us couldn’t wait to stop paying for film and processing. I was talking to Grant not long ago, and he said Transworld spent about 400k on film servicing. We hated film servicing so much that we even settled for the sub-par digital bodies (1D anyone?) with no steroid crops.
Anyhow - ever since I bought digital, I couldn’t ever understand the desire to shoot film. It’s only very recently that I’ve had the desire to get a 645 film camera (with optional digital back) – I’m rambling.
Great shots. Always happy to see a new skate photographer.
For me it was Wig, Leo, and Sam as I was in the UK at that time. I jumped onto Hasselblad when I discovered the 200 series could shoot up to 1/2000 meaning I could ditch all my lights and still shoot medium format. Most of the stuff I shot prior to that isn't on my site because, TBH, it wasn't any good.
I was one of the original users on SBP, you probably knew me under a different username. I had stuff run in the mags with the original 1D, mostly postage stamp sized sequences. I remember the ongoing arguments about the pros/cons of using the 1D with its 1.3x crop on the fisheye.
For me shooting film is now mostly about 4x5. My medium format bodies have been used for projects I started back in the last decade. I'm waiting on the price of the new CFV II 50c from Hasselblad to see if I keep or ditch my existing V series bodies and lenses.
Developing at home (even color) is easy, especially if you have a sous vide machine to maintain temperature. Scanning 120 is also easier than 35mm because the larger negative means you can actually get away with using something like an Epson flatbed (whereas with 35mm if you want decent quality you need a dedicated scanner). Film is really fairly affordable for a hobby if you don't outsource development and scanning to 3rd parties.
Developing at home also means you have to shoot enough film to get through your chemistry while it's still fresh. Not to mention figuring out disposal for your spent chemicals.
I found that those things mostly just stressed me out. I'd be much happier paying a hundred bucks a month for access to a darkroom where I didn't have to worry about those things and could just enjoy the process of developing and printing.
I've never been more than a casual photographer, so figuring out how to run a darkroom by myself and how to make enough use of it to be worth my while were too big a hump to get myself over.
I love the magic of watching prints develop and even the smell of a darkroom, but truth be told, getting a full-frame digital camera recently (a Sony a7ii) that I can put my old lenses (screw mount Takumars and Pentax M primes, one Pentax A zoom) on has done more to rekindle the joy in photography for me than anything.
The Takumars, in particular, are maybe the most beautifully made things I own. Oh my god, the knurling of the focus and aperture rings is unbelievable. The action of the focus helicoid is divine. We will never see lenses made the likes of them again because the machining costs alone would probably double the price of the lenses and the beautiful action of the focus helicoid is probably completely at odds with fast autofocus.
I will concede that from an optics and coatings standpoint, the world has moved on in the last 50 years. And obviously autofocus is a thing now. But I'm not a good enough photographer to be hitting the limits of my lenses, and for me part of the joy is the way they feel in my hands.
For a cheaper, less toxic development process (but only for B&W), run a quick Google search for Caffenol. Instant coffee, sodium carbonate (washing soda), and vitamin C is all you need.
Gotta be honest, I've never handled any Nikkor lenses, but I'm sure they're also excellent. Nikon and Canon didn't come to dominate the market by building crap gear. It just so happens I was born into a Pentax family and never had any reason to drop the coin on a new body and new lenses at the same time.
That said, I almost bought an FM3a after college just to support the complete lunacy of building them new. At that point, I didn't really have enough Pentax lenses to be wedded to the system. I still kind of wish I had.
You got me thinking though: since you can adapt basically anything to E-mount, the cost of trying out another line of lenses is now down to <$100 US (cost of adapter), at least for manual focus and aperture lenses. A well-designed mirrorless mount and adapter basically renders the concept of a photographic system obsolete.
For those unfamiliar, the key dimensions on a mount are the flange distance (distance from the plane of the mount to the plane of the film), and diameter. There are two things to know about flange distance:
1) It used to be "large" (45mm give or take a few) to allow for room for the mirror in a DSLR to swing upwards.
2) You can't adapt a lens with a smaller flange distance on a body that has a larger flange distance. Well, you can, but you use infinity focus.
Because mirrorless cameras don't have a mirror (go figure), they're freed from constraint 1, and can make the flange distance as short as they care to, basically letting them eliminate the issue of 2.
Adapters used to be awkward, at best, (nonexistent at worst) because they would have to adapt two mounts of fundamentally similar diameters without having a lot (any?) room to move the lens along its axis.
Adapters for a mirrorless body can offset the lens tens of millimeters along its axis from the body flange, leaving plenty of room to resolve any mechanical incompatibilities in the mounts.
An alternative to “scanning” your 120 negs is to use a light-table (or a large enough lcd screen showing an all white image) and taking a digital photograph of it.
once you’ve captured the negative digitally, you can use editing apps to flip the curve to obtain a photo positive.
I even owned a hi-end Nikon scanner but it already starts with 120 film which is like 40€ for 5 rolls of Portra 400. Not speaking of keeping all chemicals fresh.
If you forego scanning and make paper prints, OR put up with so-so scanning quality, it can be made cheap at home.
Edit - a bonus with making paper prints (with an enlarger, I should also clarify) a side benefit is that photographic prints scan pretty well in ordinary documents scanners!
The college paper I worked at had a darkroom and upon graduation I had a home darkroom for 4 years, stuffed into various apartment closets. Honestly it’s kinda of a pain, there is the enlarger (not cheap), the timer, chemicals (the fixer I think was somewhat nasty). Then you look at the prints after they’ve dried and you notice the dust spots.
Not to mention the fact that the negative contains more dynamic range than the print, so often your dodging and burning the image to adjust.
Though I miss the magic of a photo appearing on a piece of paper when printing, I kinda don’t miss a lot about the process.
After college darkrooms, I briefly setup my old home darkroom in a downstairs half-bath. It just wasn't worth it and, to tell the truth, I was probably a bit burned out on photography at that point.
I continued to shoot slides on trips but it wasn't until I got into digital photography that I really fully got back into it.
First time I looked into the viewfinder of a Hassie, I knew it was something special. Ever since, I've wanted one. And I got my chance as a photographer friend of mine simply let me lend his 500CM on a trip to London. That got me some of the best pictures I've ever taken. Finding out that nearly the same model went to the moon was just a bonus.
I once owned a Blad, and kinda regret selling it. D'uh.
Now my main medium format gear is a Rolleiflex TLR, use it for shooting anything... but still miss the Blad due to it's versatility: interchangeable lenses and film backs.
How I always wished I could own a Hassy! Just to be able to experience the mechanism, hear the shutter, advance the film. And the contact sheets you would see were always so amazing with detail and it seemed like it conferred instant professional quality.
Alas, even now, that gear still sells for $500+ (even broken stuff) on Ebay, I can't bring myself to buy one. How is it still retaining its value? Just like Leicas. Who's taking photos and getting film developed that gives it strong market pricing? Nostalgic people unwilling to admit the camera is useless anymore? A puzzle.
I'm a hobbyist photographer. I still shoot film, although not with a Hasselblad. The reason I do it is that I like the aesthetic, different films also have different types of grain. Shooting film also slows me down. Each shot is going to cost me money to process, so I take my time to see a scene unfold and compose my shot. I always carry a digital camera when I'm out and about just in case I see something interesting, but when I shoot film I always take a camera out with the intention of taking an interesting photo.
Also shooting with medium format film, it allows me to get higher resolution than a similar priced digital camera. Digital Medium format cameras exist but are significantly more expensive compared to an old film one.
Certain film cameras in good condition are getting hard to find, so they either hold their price or go up. Sometimes if an influential film camera blogger mentions a particular camera that too can cause the prices to spike as well.
I've often heard a comparison to using film is similar to vinyl records.
Many professionals still shoot medium format on film because the digital counterparts are ludicrously expensive and lower resolution. Hasselblad's come with their own brand premium (in part because of stories like this), but many older cameras retain their value because the lenses are still excellent even by modern standards.
I just bought a Mamiya 645 (they call Mamiya the 'poor man's Hasselblad'). Spend about $800 on gear, looking forward to trying it out. The developing and scanning here is expensive but it's a fun hobby and I'm looking forward to a more considered, tactile kind of shooting.
They're certainly not 'useless' - this camera with good film should resolve a similar amount of detail as my Nikon D810 with a good lens. Obviously given the inflexibility you wouldn't use it for, say, photojournalism or most types of commercial photography, but medium format film is still used a lot in art photography and portraits.
Of course I exaggerated a bit to say they're useless. But it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that they're seldom used.
Unless you're really consciously going on a photo-taking trip, you're generally not carrying around these huge old mechanical cameras, getting the film developed, etc. Every step of the process is more involved and time consuming -- where are you getting the negatives/slides printed afterwards?
Unless you're a high skills photographer, it just doesn't match people's use cases these days. Also, I've seen friends take up medium format as a fad, but they generally lose interest after a year at most.
That said, I borrowed an old Bronica several years ago, and I enjoyed it a lot. There something so satisfying about loading that film up, winding, exposing, and getting your hands wet on the chemicals, and having a big negative to look at, with sharpness outdoing anything you see even today in digital.
My father was a commercial photographer, and inherited a Hasselblad from him. Shot it for a few years and took some wonderful pictures, but I fell out of love with the darkroom process. Maybe I’ll invest in a digital back at some point, but the cost of doing so seems excessive for amateur purposes.
There is an argument for debunking the moon landing conspiracy theories I still find mind-blowing:
With the technology of 1969 it was easier to build a rocket and land on the moon to take such pictures (and the video transmissions) than to fake the pictures.
In the picture with the rover, interesting details of the wheel can be seen. It appears to be a weave of some kind, with crosses of bolted sheets of some kind along the middle.
[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums