Shooting Medium Format Film in 2021

I started shooting film after being a digital photographer for 15+ years.

I didn’t grow up with film photography (or with any photography at all, for that matter); rather, my love for gadgets and computers opened the door to the world of capturing light. When I started learning the basics of exposure and composition, the photographic world was shifting rapidly towards digital cameras, and film was seen as something of a pointless and outdated medium. Even in the early days of digital SLRs when low light performance and resolution compared poorly with film, there was a clear trajectory towards CMOS sensors and away from film for almost every application.

To be honest, my newfound interest in film parallels other analog revival trends like cassettes and vinyl records or retro video games. Anachronistic technologies can appeal to new generations of people who never used them - the novelty alone is sufficient to resurrect antiquated ways of doing things. Just as the act of flipping a vinyl record to side-B departs sharply from the act of calling out, “Alexa, play Dark Side of the Moon”, film photography requires a different process from digital photography, and that process is what appeals to many new film shooters.

The process is neither better nor worse than that of digital photography - it’s just different. Here are some of my reflections on shooting medium format film in the digital age.

Choice

This is both a blessing and a curse, but there is no shortage of available pathways to shooting 120mm film. There are mechanical medium format film cameras from 60+ years ago that still reliably function, battery-powered cameras from the last decade with modern conveniences like automatic exposure and focus, and everything in between. There really is at least one medium format camera choice for everyone’s particular creative aspirations and budgetary constraints. There are SLRs, TLRs, and rangefinders. Interchangeable film backs. Polaroid film backs. Digital backs. Auto-focus or manual-focus only. A waist-level or eye-level viewfinder. The possibilities are myriad, and that’s a good thing.

That is, until it’s not a good thing. The amount of choice can be overwhelming at first, and finding reliable information about older cameras can be tricky (there aren’t that many people shooting 120mm). The biggest problem, though, and one that doesn’t really pertain to 35mm film cameras, is that of format. “Medium format” is a catch-all term for film that’s bigger than 35mm but smaller than large format, and there is no single standard (or even dominant) format. A roll of 120mm film can be loaded into a camera that produces a square 6x6 cm negative, for example. Or a slightly rectangular 6x7. Or a much wider 6x9. Or 6x4.5, both in portrait and landscape orientations. There are many cameras to pick from in all of these different formats, and one really needs to decide beforehand which aspect ratio best suits the intended use of the camera. It’s probably not best to shoot portraits with a 6x9 camera, or landscapes with a 6x6, for example.

Cost

This is one of the most significant practical differences between film and digital: SD cards are cheap, film is expensive. While there is considerable variability in the cost of medium format cameras and lenses, the film itself has a more fixed cost, and it’s non-negligible. The actual cost for any individual will depend upon the particular film stock, the number of frames per roll of 120mm film, and developing and scanning fees. For reference, both of my medium format cameras shoot 6x4.5 (which is small by medium format standards), so I get 15 or 16 frames per roll of 120mm film. The film stock I shoot most often is Kodak Portra 400, which costs around 10 USD per roll, and developing at a local lab is another 4 or 5 bucks on top of that. (I scan my own negatives these days, which reduces the cost a little bit.) So for me it works out to a cost of around 1 USD every time I press the shutter button. (Compare this to digital, in which the cost of a frame approaches 0 with every subsequent shot.)

Process

That one-dollar-per-shot calculation changes the way I approach photography when I shoot film, obviously. Whereas digital photography’s low cost-per-frame excuses (if not promotes) a rapid-fire, take-all-shots approach, film’s high cost encourages precisely the opposite. When I shoot film, I slow down the process dramatically, framing each shot carefully and asking the question, “is this frame a keeper?” or, more crassly, “would I rather have this photo than a dollar?” Having only 16 attempts per roll and wanting all 16 of them to be successful necessitates an attention to detail that I’ve carried over to my digital shooting as well. I find I’m a lot less trigger-happy even though filling an SD card is basically free.

Another stark difference between film and digital shooting is the lack of immediate feedback. When I shoot film, I can never know in the moment if I’m getting it right. This was frustrating at the beginning, especially when I was trying out old mechanical cameras with no light meter and no auto-focus. I do my best to expose correctly and get the shot in focus, but I won’t know if I’ve managed to do either of those things until I get the negative back from the developer, hours to days to weeks later. This makes the learning process longer than it would be otherwise; learning from my mistakes has a long lead time.

Positives

There are some things about shooting medium format film that I think are unequivocal positives. Trying out different film stocks, for example, is great fun. Each one renders color and light and shadow differently, and discovering which films suit which subjects (or my own personal tastes) is a process unique to film. Certain film stocks have iconic and distinctive looks that require no special filters or digital manipulation to achieve. There’s a reason that many digital photographers choose to add grain or noise to their photos in post-processing - it can be a good look for an image. With film, it comes naturally.

One thing I’ve been surprised to discover with film is the wide dynamic range available in a single frame. Overexposing film (in most cases) doesn’t push the highlights to pure white, bereft of any texture or content, as it does with a digital sensor. In fact, many films (like Portra 400) can look more pleasing when they’re slightly overexposed. There’s more shadow detail and different color tonality with more light. This means that film can actually be more forgiving (in overexposure, at least) than digital, and it opens up more creative possibilities in shooting different film stocks rated at different speeds.

With medium format specifically, resolution is another unquestionable positive. Even the smallest medium format negative (6x4.5) is huge - more than 2 and a half times larger than a 35mm (“full-frame”) negative. This allows for unique shallow depth-of-field effects and enormous amounts of detail. In my personal experience, the only limitation on the resolution of my negative scans is the scanner itself - in my case my Olympus m43 digital camera, which has an 80-megapixel “high resolution” shooting mode. There is considerably more resolution available from the negative than 80 megapixels, but for my purposes a 6x4.5 negative contains more resolution than I have any practical use for.

Negatives

(Insert negative pun of choice. I’m waiting for a good one to develop.) There are also plenty of reasons not to bother shooting medium format film. I’ve already mentioned that film is expensive, but most newer medium format cameras and lenses are fairly costly as well. (For reference, my Bronica RF645 was about 800 USD, and the Mamiya 645AF with 55mm f/2.8 lens was somewhere just over 1,000. Both were bought second-hand on eBay.) Medium format cameras also tend to be fairly bulky and lack modern features like weather sealing and auto-focus. Older cameras commonly have problems with deteriorating light seals and failing shutter mechanisms, and finding parts or repair centers outside of big cities will be difficult.

Another thing film shooters must eventually make peace with is the loss of entire rolls of film. Film can expire, labs can make mistakes, and user error in loading and unloading film is common in the beginning. It’s much easier to lose a whole day’s work with film than it is with digital, and unlike digital, there’s no way to rescue ruined film. Shooting film means flirting with disaster more often.

Inflexibility is another jarring drawback to film compared to modern digital cameras. This can be channeled into a positive thing (cf. the phrase “art from adversity”), but most medium format cameras come with one fixed-focal-length (prime) lens that isn’t particularly fast - often f/4.5 or f/3.5. Not the end of the world, but then recall that each roll of film has to be shot at the same ISO speed. There are different films available with speeds ranging from 50 to 3200, but every shot on a roll of film has to be exposed with the same value. Imagine gluing an f/4 prime lens to your favorite digital camera and shooting all day at ISO 400. That’s what it’s like to shoot many medium format cameras.

I also feel the need to mention the environmental impact of film, as this is perhaps the only aspect of film photography that has a moral valence. Film is a physical medium that needs to be packaged and shipped. The exposed film needs to be processed using chemicals and water. The negatives need to be either stored or trashed. This isn’t a particularly green process and ultimately isn’t sustainable in its current form. Perhaps there could be new approaches to producing and developing film that mitigate these concerns, but given the relatively small number of people who regularly buy film, there is no financially viable way for film producers to invest in new technologies to do so.

Conclusions

So, who should get into medium format film in 2021? The most compelling reasons are, I think, the challenges and new insights into the process of photography that shooting medium format produces. Any photographer who has only ever experienced the craft in the digital age can learn something new and valuable from shooting film, even 35mm. I think anyone who wants to be challenged to experience photography in a new way should give medium format a try (as long as the costs aren’t too much of a concern). Film photography is never going to replace digital in my personal shooting preferences, but I can see a niche place for it going forward; I think I’ll be shooting medium format film into 2021 and beyond.