Deathbed Vigil for an Old Favourite

Unless you're brand new to film photography you/ve been witnes to the buzz in the photographic community that comes with the announcement that a new film stock is about to hit the market, or more likely an old one is being re-introduced. Just as surely you've seen the the reverse play out when a film stock disappears from the market. While inevitably these announcements are accompanied by lamentations by some about how this is a sign that choice in the film market is drying up, the wiser among us realize that in the wider picture there is no such trend. Of course things will never be the same as they were when film was the only viable way to do photography, but that's a done deal now. For the most part anyone who was going to give up using film for digital has already done so. What we see today is not a decline. Films come, films go. They always have.

Of course it's a little easier to keep this perspective when the film whose immenent demise has just been announced is not one of the mainstays of your own working method. Sure it was a shame when the Kodachrome process was shut down for good, but honestly I hadn't shot with that particular film in the ten years prior to that. In the past all of these discontinuations came and went with me sad to see another emulsion go, but happily going on with my work no differently than before.

This time though, with Fuji's announcement that they will be discontinuing their Neopan Acros in all formats as of October 2018, five short months from this writing, it finally hits home for me. It has been roughly five years since I returned to shooting film for virtually everything creative that I do. Over that time, though I haven't kept count, I'd say at least half of the rolls that have gone through my cameras have been Acros, and it wouldn't surprise me if I were to learn that it had been a good deal more.

If you're not familiar with it's characteristics, Acros has all the basics covered. It's a 100 ISO black and white negative film with sharpness and grain that put it in roughly the same league as Kodak's T-Max. While it's almost purely a subjective thing, its tonality is something I find pleasing, and at the very least few find it objectionable. Acros has a few other tricks up its sleve though. It is uniquely good at handling highlight detail. This makes it particularly useful in contrasty situations. This also means over exposure is less of a worry, so if you're struggling with shadows you want to see detail in you can usually give it an extra stop and let that lattitude cover the rest. If one were looking to fault Acros you could accuse it of being so forgiving as to invite carelessness.

To me though shooting Acros comes with one over riding delight that beats all the others, and that is that reciprocity failure is something you almost don't have to think about (For those not familiar with reciprocity failure please see the excellent explanation by Mat Marrash on the FPP web site.) Given that I, like many photographers who share a love of the landscape, enjoy experimenting with long exposure techniquest, this makes it a very special film. With many black and white emulsions exposures as short as one second may require an exposure adjustment to compensate for the film's deficiencies with lower light levels. With Acros no adjustment is needed for exposures of up to two minutes.

Now I'm not above bringing along a reciprocity cheat sheet or even doing a bit of math in my head, so why worry too much about having to compensate? It's simply that reciprocity failure can quickly get out of hand, and the more prone to reciprocity failure a film is, the more easily this can happen. With some films for example, if after accounting for reciprocity failure I determine and exposure of 30 seconds at f/8 is appropriate, but feel the scene requires me to stop down to f/16, my new exposure time may become not 2 minutes as we might expect, but 7 or 8 minutes. And if the light may be changing on you over that duration of time the shutter is open any real chance at an accurate exposure may come down to little more than a semi-educated guess. For my money, its' best just to keep things as linear and predictable as possible.

Of course the final factor is simply that Acros is what I'm used to, it's what I've learned to handle. For me it is a known and predicatable commodity. In my case it even has an added bonus in that processing time in my developer of choice, PMK Pyro is exactly the same for Acros as it is for HP5, which is the film I usually turn to when I need a bit more speed, so I can just develop everything together.

Change is inevitable of course, but that doesn't mean we can't fight it. Even though I probably had enough Acros on hand to get me through the summer as it was I immediately put in a panic order as soon as I heard the announcement. Shortly after this Acros was nowhere to be found at any of the online outlets I knew or could find. This was probably due to a rush created by all the other fools who made the same panic buy I did when they heard. When they went out of stock I saw that B&H simply listed Acros as discontinued making me wonder if that was it, so when it was again listed as in stock earlier today, you guessed it, I put in another panic buy. I imagine there will be one or two more in the coming months, as well as the need to buy a larger freezer. I may be in Acros for a few more years yet.

Of course that's only prolonging the inevitable, but so is all of life if you think about it. What happens when it's finally gone? Seems I should have a while to think about it. By then there may be something new.

What's In The Box Is Outside The Box

It's been a while since I've made a good impulse buy, so I was well passed due for one when I ran across this lot at everyone's favourite auction site (or least favourite depending who you talk to, it seems there are no in betweens). I became the proud owner of five rolls of Svema CO-32d colour reversal film, expired just slightly before the Soviet Union itself, at a price I could easily shrug off if the experiment was a total failure.

It might seem like an odd way to go for someone such as myself who prefers good sized negatives made with excellent optics to produce full range black and white prints. At first blush it may strike you as a better choice for a member of the Holga toting, happy accident fostering, low fidelity image crowd. Though it may strike some as the polar opposite of what I usually go for I don't see it that way. One of the qualities I care about most in my images is character, however it's achieved.

Like many impulse buys however there were a few aspects to this one that might have given me pause had I taken more time to consider things. I knew a colour reversal film from what was then the Soviet Union probably wasn't made for the standard E6 process like the Fujichromes and Ektachromes of the same era, but I didn't think this would be a big deal since I intended to cross process in C41 chemistry anyway. It was only once it had arrived that I started to research my options for processing the stuff and what it turned up suggested a change of plan was needed. I found a thread in the APUG forums suggesting a standard C41 process would strip the image from the film, a suggestion that was corroborated by the scraps of information I was able to find elsewhere in my online searches. One commenter was stated this was simply the result of the relatively high temperatures typical of colour processes and that they'd be fine in C41 chemistry with extended development at room temperature. More numerous, and it seems to me authoritative, were claims that it was the bleach employed in C41 chemistry do in the images resulting in a blank strip of film at any temperature and that C22 chemistry was the only viable option if I didn't care to gather all the ingredients needed to reproduce the original ORWO reversal process, It can be hard enough getting my hands on standard chemistry sometimes and the quest (no doubt the expensive quest) to get my hands on the oddball chemistry needed couldn't be justified for the sake of these five rolls of film which might not work out in any case.

What's a guy to do? Improvise! Among the posts in that APUG thread I found was one that listed the recipes to make every step of the C22 process from raw chemistry. The active ingredient for the bleach step appeared to be just Potassium Ferricyanide which I keep around because of its uses in black and white print making. Having most of the other ingredients as well I matched the formula as well as I could to produce half a litre of experimental C22ish bleach.

Bleach is just one step in the colour process though, and it was only through luck that I had materials on hand to create a reasonable facsimile of the one chemical bath. For the rest of the process I'd have to wing it. Stitching together various other nuggets of advice either found through web searches or offered up in discussion forums in response to my own queries I put together the following plan based on a working temperature of 20^oC

1. Water pre-soak: 1 min
2. Unicolor C41 developer: 20 min
3. Stop bath (standard film dilution ): 2 min
4. Water rinse: 2 changes w/ 30 sec agitation each
5. C22ish bleach: 7 min
6. EcoPro Clearfix (1:4): 6 min

Followed by the standard wash I would give to any black and white film. There's nothing special about the choice of fixer, this is just what I use for black and white processes. The only real departure from this plan was necessitated a discovery made when loading the film onto the reel for the daylight developing tank. Over the decades it seems the backing paper had begun to adhere to the back of the film. I suppose I could have dealt with this afterwards but if nothing else I didn't want little bits of black paper floating around the chemistry baths, most of which would be re-used. The pre-soak stage was increased from 1 minute to about 200 minutes with several changes of water supplemented with sessions in full darkness of rubbing little bits of damp paper off the surface of the film. The effort was largely, if not totally, successful.

As I pulled the film back off the reel following all of this it wasn't clear if my efforts had been in vain. Of course there was base fog like nobody's business with plenty of mottling and density variations, but while I could see that there was actual image hiding in there it wasn't clear if it would be usable. Not surprisingly my first attempts to scan them didn't look like much, revealing far more mottling than image, but I managed to find a trick. The messiness was confined to the red and green layers of the scans, but the blue layer was just the opposite, revealing just enough mottling to make it interesting. I wound up making two scans of each image, one a monochrome image weighted almost entirely to the blue channel, and a second scan made just for colour balance. I then pasted the first scan as a luminosity layer over the second colour scan. The results are what you see here.

As you can readily see, especially in the third image, my efforts to remove the adhered backing paper were not entirely successful. Another good soak might just clear away what remains, but I'm still unsure whether this is advisable or even desirable. I bought this film with a mind to achieving some interesting and unusual results and in my estimation at least it was a success. The only question now is whether to stick with what worked reasonably the first time or experiment to see if I can get something even more satisfactory. I metered for an ISO of 8 for most of the roll, going down further, maybe to 4 ISO, seems advisable. Perhaps a bit more time in the developer or perhaps mimicking the original process even further a short soak in a standard black and white developer before moving on to the colour developer might yield negatives that at the very least won't be as hard to work with. I've got some room to experiment at any rate. The Ukrainian seller had one more lot of 5 rolls left and I just claimed it. 

The Wiggle Wagon - Part II

The time had come to see what this Wiggle Wagon was all about. My new companions lead me out the back of Garth's Kitchen through a storage room stacked with odds and ends including a few appliances that might have belonged to the restaurant, though I guessed the shelves of milk crates filled with vinyl LPs probably belonged to the adjoining local radio station. Through the back door steps lead down into what would have been an alley way if there had been buildings on the other side but there was only trees on the other side of the crushed stone parking area that was empty except for the Wiggle Wagon, a sky blue Ford Falcon dating back to the early 60's.

Cousin Ken was explaining how he made some sort of deal for her but the details were pretty vague. He showed me where he had done a bit of body work he seemed rather proud of. You could see where he had patched up a spot between the door and the wheel well, but the rough surface and the paint that wasn't quite a perfect match wasn't nearly as obvious as the rusted hole I imagine had been there before the handiwork. Cars have never been a particular interest of mine, at least not since my teen years, but having been smitten with a camera that owes its classic styling to the same decade these past few months it was hard not to appreciate.

I started extending the tripod legs but realized there was no point. It was almost a perfect Sunny 16 afternoon, allowing me to use shutter speeds of 1/250th and higher even with the Acros 100 that was barely usable inside. I'm a landscape guy so I guess it was habit but the tripod would really just get in the way here, and having more freedom to go hand held was one of the reasons I got the Bronica in the first place. The whole idea was to branch out a little, to be open to the possibilities when the chance to work in a different way came along - and here it was. That's not to say I envision myself ever becoming a street photographer, my M.O. has followed the slow photography philosophy for too long now. Like anyone else though my photography is linked to my experience, one following the other, even becoming the other as my visit to Garth's Kitchen was now proving. 

I made a lot of other photographs during those few days in this part of the province, some of them pretty good I think. They, like the rest of the experience of being there, were the sort of thing I had expected. Cousin Ken, Des, and the Wiggle Wagon - who could have predicted those? That was the one part of trip that never could have been expected, the experience that will stay in memory long after the other details have faded. Maybe it's no coincidence then that these are the photos I most wanted to see, the ones I wanted to show you first.

Taming the Dragon

Is that dark speck out in the water another pinhole in the negative? Thankfully no, close inspection reveals it is just a duck.

This is a progress report of sorts on the situation I described a couple of episodes back in "Curse of the Dragon". That title refers to one subject, a driftwood log that reminded me of the dragon figurehead on a Norse longboat, of which nearly every image I took seemed to result in a negative plagued to some degree or other by pinholes in the negative, resulting in dark spots on the positive image. It wasn't the subject of course, just a bit of bad luck that somehow on three separate rolls of film that contained images of that log nearly all the spots wound up on those negatives.

Now if the only thing I was ever going to do with these negatives was scan them and put them up on the internet, or even if I printed from scanned files, this would be little more than an annoyance. These black spots are no more difficult to remove in Photoshop than are dust spots, the near inevitability of which I've reconciled with long ago. For me however a finished image is nothing short of a traditional silver print. With Photoshop taken out of the equation retouching dust spots is done on the prints directly using special retouch dyes and a #000 brush. This of course can only make a light spot darker and there is some risk of ruining the print, especially if you're out of practice. Retouching the dark spots that result from pinholes in the negative requires much more drastic measures and a much greater risk of botching the job. After spending hours getting all the printing details down, toning, archival washing and so on (retouching has to come after all of this) the risk of that kind of heartbreak is something I consider unacceptable. Finding solution to this out of the blue problem is therefore a necessity.

A quick review or those of you who haven't read the first part, pinholes in photographic negatives can be caused either by air-bells, which are simply tiny bubbles of air that cling to the surface of the film preventing developer from reaching the emulsion at that spot, or chemical reactions suddenly releasing little gas bubbles that blow tiny holes in the emulsion. Think of the fizz you get when you mix baking soda and vinegar. Developers contain an alkali very similar to baking soda (I start with baking soda to make the alkali for my home mixed developers) and the acetic acid in most stop baths essentially is vinegar. It seems pretty safe to eliminate cause number two though - I use plain water in between developer and fix.

So air-bells are almost certainly the culprit, but what is behind their sudden appearance in such numbers? To be sure the occasional stray pinhole has found its way onto my negatives from time to time, but never before has an image looked like it had been sprayed with a tommy-gun. My standard practice when developing roll film includes two preventative measures - pre-soaking the film in plain water before starting with the developer and giving the tank several firm raps on the counter after every agitation cycle to shake off any bubbles that form. Many darkroom workers suggest a single rap only after the developer is added and say they find a pre-soak to be a waste of time so I always thought that if anything I was being overly cautious. To be suffering from them anyway just seems unjust.

Something In The Water?

I had two suspects in mind. The first was a possible change in the water. Part of the reason I always seem able to find new images along the same few kilometres of beach is the fact the lake is an ever changing mistress. Well that same changing lake that figures in so many of my images also happens to be the source of the water those images are developed in. It never seemed to be a problem. The water quality where I live is pretty good, we don't have hard water and our town water was rated the second best tasting water in Ontario. But the treatment and testing of tap water is done with a mind to human consumption, not consistent results in the darkroom. Distilled water is considered the gold standard when mixing photo chemistry. In areas where the tap water is less suitable for photo chemistry it is virtually mandatory. Even though I've never considered tap water to be a problem the one virtue distilled water has is that it's not subject to sudden changes and is the same anywhere you go. It isn't expense that's kept me from using but rather the dual inconveniences of having to store it and the fact it doesn't run hot and cold which can make getting it to a specific temperature an extra challenge at times.

Factor number two was the change I had made a month or so before from using the stainless steel tanks and reels that had been my standard for years to plastic Paterson tanks and reels. It seemed like a safe choice - Paterson has to be the most widely used daylight processing tank system by quite a stretch. The comparative advantages of plastic vs. stainless could (and very well might) be the subject of an episode on their own, but my reasons for doing so have less to do with versatility and ease of use than my accidental discovery that a problem with negatives showing more development along the edges of the film compared to the middle simply went away when I used them. For this reason I was hoping the water was the problem. I did not want the solution to the pinhole problem to require a return to uneven development I thought I had banished for good. It wasn't a severe problem, it just required some extra effort during printing to even things out, but it was a pain and sometimes even meant using an extra sheet of paper or two to get things right and I was glad to be rid of it.

My stainless steel tank and 120 reel on the left, and Paterson
tank on the right along with a reel adjusted for 120/220 film.

Why should the tank make any difference at all? The main reason, I believe, is that the reels for the plastic tanks are much more tightly wound. For those of you not familiar with spiral reels for processing film they are simply consist of two circular grooved surfaces separated by the exact width of the film allowing roll to be developed can be wound around the grooves, ensuring no part of the roll is in contact with any other when placed in a cylindrical developing tank. As regular readers are probably aware I primarily shoot 120 film. The stainless steel reels I use are wound just tightly enough to accommodate standard length of 120 film which can be up to 840mm long. One of the great advantages of Paterson reels is that the same reel you load your 120 film into can be adjusted to accommodate a roll of 35mm film up to 36 exposures as well. But a roll of 35mm film is almost twice as long as 120 roll. This means that a 120 roll is wound much more tightly than it would need to be if the reel was designed exclusively for 120 film as is the case with stainless reels. As a consequence there is less space between successive windings of the film surface to allow bubbles to escape. Looking at film in the tank with the lid off while its being washed I have also noticed the flatter tops of the plastic reels seem more apt to keep the bubbles that have risen from below from escaping to the surface.

Well, that was my theory anyway, the one I hoped wasn't the case. Though it seemed reasonable I had a couple of reasons to think it wasn't so, The first was this wasn't the first time I had used these tanks, so why didn't I notice this before. The second was I have seen all kinds of stainless vs. plastic comparisons and had never heard anyone suggest propensity for problems with air-bells was a factor. The proof of the pudding though, would be in the eating.

The Investigations Begin

Chosing to let hope lead I decided to stay with the Paterson tanks for now and see what happens with distilled water. I'm currently working with the Beutler formula as my standard developer, mixing the stock solution from scratch using distilled water. Now I would be diluting it for use with distilled water as well, rather than tap water which had always been my practice before. Just to be safe I also used distilled water for the pre-soak. For the remainder of the process tap water would be used as usual since I had no suspicions the problem might occur after development. Even as I was hanging the strip out to dry the result was obvious however as an unmissable clear spot appeared smack in the middle of a dense are of sky on one of the images. On the bright side it wasn't an image I would have wanted to print anyway and there weren't many pinholes besides this. In the grander scheme of things however this wouldn't do.

Before reverting to the stainless tank however I decided to give one other idea a go - adding a few drops of the wetting agent (Photo Flo, LFN or what have you) to the pre-soak and the developer. Having run into one or two sources that recommend against this I was reluctant to try it, but the more I researched the more I found this was done a matter of course by more people than I had suspected. No matter, it still wasn't difficult to find pinholes.

I actually had to dig the stainless steel tank out, having stored it away thinking I might never have use for it again. It's back in it's old spot now though because from it emerged the first roll of film since the curse of the dragon began that did not contain pinholes. Some extra density along the edges, yes, but those can be dealt with.

Putting It All Together

Did I really have to deal with them though. I had a pretty good idea why negatives were coming out of the plastic tanks more evenly developed. Even when filled with chemistry they weren't really full. There was always a generous amount of air at the top so that when the tank was inverted there was room for things to slosh around, replacing exhausted developer with fresh more completely. With stainless tanks I have always been in the habit of mixing enough chemistry to allow me to see it above the top of the light trap in the lid - 475ml. It was more that the 450ml suggested, but it was somehow reassuring to see it, knowing there was no possibility anything inside wasn't completely immersed in chemistry.

Straight from the scanner this is typical of the results I often
got with negatives developed in stainless steel tanks. Note how
much brighter the sides are compared to the centre.

With a bit of new perspective this now seemed like precisely the wrong thing to do. Before my next roll went in I decided to find out exactly how much chemistry was actually required to cover the reel in the tank. It seemed 400ml would do it and 420ml gave plenty of cushion if, for example, the tank wasn't set down exactly level. It also divides out nicely with the 1+1+12 dilution I've come to favour with my standard developer. Compared to what I had been doing that's 55ml of extra space to allow chemistry to slosh around, mix together and even out during agitation (also 55ml less chemistry used.) Would it make a difference?

It's only been one roll since I tried this but so far the answer is yes. The image at the top is from this roll. It came out as even as anything that's come out of the Paterson tank and pinhole free. It seems like it's the plastic tanks that will be headed to storage now, which is a shame really since it was the more complete system. The stainless system I have limits me to developing one roll at a time which can be quite a pain. I'll be travelling most of this week and anticipate returning with several rolls to process. On the bright side I like working with the stainless tanks. I find the process of loading the reels more foolproof than with the plastic and the tanks I have don't leak at all. For some reason every Paterson tank I have ever used dribbles a little chemistry every time they are inverted.

None of this is to suggest the Paterson or any other plastic reel and tank system are bound to give you the same results. If everyone had the results I got these products would have fallen off the market long ago. It's, what can I say, one of those things. Somewhere in the idiosyncrasies of the materials I use and the way I do things is the reason I had problems while countless others did not. Maybe someday I'll figure out what it is. The real bottom line is that if none of this happened I'd probably still be doing things the way I have for years thinking density variations were something I just had to live with.

Post Script

As I said I'll be travelling much of the upcoming week. The bad news is that leaves me without any significant time for any little extras like writing another blog entry so there will be no Golden Age of Silver next week. The good news is that I anticipate having at least a photo or two taken during my travels to talk about, and if for some reason I don't, well the reasons for that should be worth talking about for their own sake. At any rate, lets all agree to meet back here sometime in early June.

Meet the Beast: Part IV

At long last it's time to wrap up this series with a few final thoughts on the RB67 and how it might or might not be a good fit for photographers in this day and age interested in a classic analog medium format system. As I hope I've made clear to this point these cameras have a lot going for them - they're ruggedly built and designed to perform to professional standards, but drastic changes in the way that the professionals these cameras were designed for work has flooded the market with used systems, often in top condition, priced lower than the most basic of entry level DSLRs. Why would anyone with a fondness for shooting film and an eye towards the increasingly popular medium format think of looking at anything else? Well, there may be a few reasons.

The price of the 17% gain in negative size you get with the Mamiya RB67 (left) is an added burden in terms of size and weight that is much higher percentage wise compared to a camera like the Bronica S2A on the right.

My closing comment in the last episode (the text portion, not in the video) let you in on the fact that I've been using a different camera lately. That's it on the right in the photo above, a classic Bronica S2 or S2A (there's been some debate about which of the two models this actually is, they're virtually identical). I put it there for comparison though, it's still all about the Mamiya. As you no doubt have guessed the comparison is all about size.

The Bronica is a fairly typical 6x6 cm square medium format SLR. Though it's a bit heavier, in terms of physical dimensions it's roughly the size of the more widely recognized Hasselblads such as the 500cm introduced at about the same time. To be fair the RB67 will produce somewhat larger 6x7 cm negatives, but the slight increase in negative size comes at the price of an anything but slight increase in equipment bulk. It's not just a weight increase either, the RB takes up more shelf space and requires a roomier camera bag when you bring it into the field.  The problem is only compounded when you add lenses and other accessories that are similarly scaled up compared to most other popular medium format gear.

Is all the extra bulk necessary to go from 6x6 to 6x7 with a medium format SLR? Another well known 6x7 format SLR is the Pentax 6x7 (later to become the Pentax 67). Though they shared the RB's format, these cameras had a very different design philosophy. Gone is the revolving back design, the integrated bellows focusing and the in-lens shutter, these cameras could only be described as scaled up 35mm SLRs. With a waist level finder and normal lens a Pentax 67 would come in at around 2kg, about half way between a similarly equipped Hasselblad and an RB67. The layout of these cameras however limited the usefulness of waist level viewing, so prism finders are the norm for the Pentax's, bringing the total weight just shy of our Mamiya. Add to this the fact that vertical shooting with the Pentax will require a heavier tripod and the RB is arguably the easier camera to carry and handle in the field.

Carrying an RB67 to get this image rather than a typical square format SLR involved a huge penalty in terms of weight sheer size, only to end up cropping the result down to the square dimensions a smaller camera would have given me.

Whether the larger negative is worth it or not is of course a personal question, one that I had to answer for myself. There are times that for particular images I've really appreciated it. At least as frequently however I end up cropping an image square, completely negating any advantage carrying all that extra bulk gave me, not to mention the extra bit of wasted film that gives me 10 rather than 12 exposures per roll. The appearance of a new square format camera in my collection is a good clue to the direction I've been leaning as of late.

That said it was actually one of the RB67s other shortcomings, a seemingly minor thing, that got me to thinking about moving to a square format system. Back in part II of the series I discussed the normal/mirror up switch on the lens and how leaving it in the wrong position can leave a photographer firing away with nothing to indicate the shutter wasn't opening until the blank film emerged from the processing tank. This was not a problem so long as I stuck to my usual "slow photography" M.O. of shooting tripod mounted, locking the mirror and using a cable release. For reasons I'll save for a future episode I've been thinking of expanding my approach in such a way that, given my predisposition for absent minded oversight, would inevitably find me staring at clear pieces of film where anxiously anticipated images should be. And of course there's also the sheer size of the RB, did I mention the size?

While in my experience the range of Mamiya Sekor lenses available for the RB67 (Sekor is Mamiya's house optical brand) are entirely up to professional standards optically, if you make the usual assumption that bigger lenses are faster lenses you may be disappointed. Normal lens for most medium format SLRs typically have an f/2.8 maximum aperture and it's not unusual for there to be a number of equally fast lenses in the range. Though lenses in the RB range are larger than those for rival systems in about the same proportion as all the other components, the fastest lens anywhere in the RB67 system has an f/3.5 maximum aperture, and no lens outside the "normal" range is any faster than f/4.5. This isn't something I consider a real disadvantage when in slow photography mode (though paying a penalty in both size and speed doesn't necessarily sit well) but it does start coming into play when I start envision radical concepts like purposely leaving the tripod in the car.

Though the Mamiya RB67 was always considered a camera for the professional photo studio this is by no means an indication that it's not up for use outside the controlled indoor environment. In fact it's quite the opposite. Their failure resistant all mechanical construction mean these cameras are anything but delicate. As so many of them outlasted their usefulness as the computer age brought more speed to the business of photography than a camera like the RB could keep up with it's no surprise that so many of them have found their way into the kit bags of photographers looking to bring them further afield. Doing so requires a willingness to accept the limitations that once made photographers look at the RB as cameras of the controlled environment, their size, their weight and the methodical approach using one demanded.

Those limitations are still present, but they're not insurmountable. After all, photographers have been carrying much heavier and slow to use large format cameras into some of the least accessible locations in the world for over 150 years. With a good carrying system and a strong back (or failing that a good chiropractor on speed dial) these cameras will put up with almost any environment a photographer hearty enough to haul it that far is likely to tolerate. Once there a willingness to take the time the RB67 demands can result in images that make it all worth while and more.

Meet the Beast: Part III

At last the thing is done. Even with the intermezzo post I'm coming in half a week late. It's not the first time I've made an instructional video (I had a small series of beginner level chess videos going a few years back), but as much as I should have really learned by now when I'm planning one of these things it seems I still lack any sense of what a slog I'm getting myself into. On top of that I decided that since my iMovie skills had gathered a few years worth of rust it was a good time to give some other video editing software a go. Not such a great idea as it turned out. The editing process didn't really get rolling until I finally gave up and started over with iMovie.

All this isn't to say I may not try a video episode again but it's certainly not something I'm going to raise any advanced expectations for. If I do try it again it'll just appear here one day unannounced.

As I mentioned before there were other things going on in my photographic world at the same time which I'll talk about next time in the final installment of this series. I might as well make my little confession now though... I've been seeing another camera.

Meet the Beast: Part II

In this second installment of Meet the Beast we're going to have a quick tour of the Mamiya RB67. For serious photographers who like to work with film there's a treasure trove of professional quality medium format equipment on the used market these days at prices that would have seemed like a miracle in the pre-digital age, and of those the Mamiya RB67 represents one of the best values in terms of price and capability.

Early results from not long after I started using the RB67. No coincidence, this was also right about the time my DSLRs became permanently relegated to utility image duty (mostly involving shots of my film cameras.)

The original model, the RB67 Professional was introduced in 1970 and updated versions were released in 1974 with the Pro S model, and finally in 1990 with the Pro SD model which was available new into the early 2000's. There's actually very little difference between them considering 30 plus years the RB was on the market, so if you know how to use one version you won't have any problems with any of the others.

As a medium format camera the RB67 normally uses the same 120 roll film popular in everything these days from Holga to Hasselblad. As the name suggests the RB67 is designed around the 6x7cm format, which means on a roll of 120 film you'll get 10 exposures. The rectangular format means there's almost no cropping required when making prints on standard size papers like 8x10 or 11x14 compared to the square format you get with many similar medium format SLRs such as the Hasselblad, virtually all Twin Lens Reflex cameras, and most of the “toy” cameras that are so popular these days.

The RB67 is a modular system. Six separate components have to come together to create a camera that's ready to use – the camera body, lens, focusing screen, finder, revolving adapter and film back.

The RB67 broken down into its individual components. Clockwise from the top left are the revolving back adapter, camera body, lens, waist level finder and 120 film back. The focus screen is also interchangeable but has been left in place here.

If we start with just the camera body we find there aren't many controls here. From the photographer's position behind the camera we see there's a large lever on the right that might be tempting to think of as a winding lever, but it's functions are limited to raising the reflex mirror and cocking the shutter. The film is wound using a separate lever that's part of the film back. We also have a large wheel on either side which are linked, and these are for focusing. The RB67 is designed to focus by means of bellows built right into the body. There's a release button up front to the lower right which is threaded for a cable release, and that's it for all the controls on the body. The only other detail of note is the accessory shoe, or cold shoe, on the left side.

Lets move on to the lens because this is where most of the controls are. The RB67 uses leaf shutters integral to the lens, so the lens barrel is where you'll find both the shutter and aperture settings. Shutter speeds typically run from 1/400^th to 1 second plus a T setting for long exposures. The design of the time exposure mode is one of my little peeves with the RB. When set to T shutter stays opened when it is released which is fine, but instead of the usual method of a second press of the release to end the exposure with the RB you either have to rotate the shutter speed ring off the T setting or start rotating the cocking lever, either of requires you to handle the camera while the shutter is still open, potentially ruining the exposure. Admittedly I can't say I've ever actually lost a shot this way, at least not yet, but why the designers couldn't simply incorporate a superior method that had already been standard leaf shutters for decades is beyond me.

Typical exposure control settings on an RB67 lens. The focus distance scale up front is just a reference for depth of field/hyperfocal distance. Working back from there is the shutter speed ring then the aperture ring. The black switch behind that is the X/M flash sync setting. The red markings near the body are for aligning the breach mount ring when mounting and removing the lens.

Since the shutter is built into the lens this is also where the flash sync terminal is, the standard p.c. socket. As with all leaf shutters flash sync works at all shutter speeds so you can use fill flash outdoors on even the brightest days. I don't know if there's an X/M sync switch on all RB lenses but there is on all the ones I own. Another standard feature on RB lenses, one that's easy to miss, is a little leaver on the lower right that closes the aperture to the stop you have dialed in giving you a quick check on depth of field in the viewfinder.

And finally we come to this little receptacle. At the centre is a standard cable release socket but the collar switch that surrounds it probably needs some explanation. You'll find it can be set to one of two settings that may be labeled “Normal” and “Mirror” or simply “N” and “M”. Setting it to Normal mode, or N, disables the in-lens cable release socket and turns shutter release control over to the release button on the body. Pressing the button or squeezing the cable release attached to it activates the usual exposure sequence, lifting the release mirror, closing the aperture and firing the shutter. In Mirror Up mode, or M, the button on the body just raises the mirror, at which point the shutter can only be fired with a cable release attached to the socket in the lens barrel. This nicely provides photographers with the functional equivalent of a mirror-up lever, but for the unwary there's a hidden trap, and yes I speak from experience here. Being the sort of photographer who normally operates from a tripod and shoots non-moving subjects, normal mode for me is anything but. The lenses are used in mirror mode virtually all the time and I just leave them there. Should I decide to go hand-held or simply don't want the shutter to fire immediately when , there's absolutely nothing to indicate anything is wrong should I forget to turn the switch to normal. I once blew the better part of a roll happily firing away, oblivious to the fact nowhere in that satisfying clunk of the mirror releasing was there a soft click of the shutter. It's the kind of mistake that, in theory, you're only supposed to make once, so lets hope those theorists know their stuff.

The unusual Normal/Mirror Up selector found on the barrel of RB67 lenses. Even experienced photographers will need to acquaint themselves with this peculiar switch before using the RB67 for the first time.

Moving to the other end of the camera, like many medium format SLR's the RB67 uses interchangeable film backs that give photographers two important advantage. First an foremost owning more than one back gives you the ability to switch mid-roll from one film types mid-roll simply by loading each back with a different emulsion. Loading a roll of colour film, therefore, doesn't commit you to finishing the roll before being able to shoot black and white. Second, special purpose backs can be used. The RB67 system included backs for shooting 645 and 6x8cm formats, and two backs that accepted different film formats, 220 and 70mm. While 70mm backs are a rarity, 220 backs were almost as common as the standard 120 version so a word of caution may be in order here. There aren't many 220 films still available, in fact to my knowledge Kodak Portra is the only thing available. If you're in the market for an RB67 it can be easy to overlook the fact that the one you found only comes with a 220 back. On the other hand Portra is a fine film and you can probably find some bargains on 220 backs.

The 120 film back removed. Note that the back has its own winding lever to advance the film, a function the lever on the body does not perform. Backs for 220 and 70mm film are also available as well as 645 and 6x8 format with 120 film.

One final advantage that may be easy to overlook – about half of the things that are likely to fail on a camera like this are in the film transport system. At today's prices just replacing a film back is likely to be much cheaper than having the whole camera repaired, and if you have spares after a failure like this you can just keep shooting.

As with any back that is removable there is a dark slide to keep the film from being exposed when it's not attached to the body. While you could pull this out and leave it as long as the back remains attached it's an easy thing to lose so it's good practice to leave it in until you're ready to make an exposure and return it as soon as you're done. There's no need to worry about accidentally leaving it in or out at the wrong time though as safety mechanisms are there to prevent you from removing the back if the dark slide isn't in, or tripping the shutter when it is in.

So far the RB67 back sounds pretty much like standard fare for a ;medium format SLR of this type, but now we're coming to this camera's defining feature, because the "RB" in RB67 stands for revolving back. Most cameras that shoot rectangular format negatives need to be turned on their side if you want to shoot verticals. That's not much of a problem with 35mm cameras but that presents more of a challenge with heavy medium format SLRs that are more likely to demand the use of a tripod. To shoot verticals most tripod heads require the camera to be dangled off to one side where the camera's extra weight can threaten to tip the whole tripod over. This is one reason so many medium format cameras adopt the square 6x6 format as there is no vertical or horizontal while you're shooting, This keeps the camera's centre of mass over top of the tripod, but making standard rectangular prints requires a good portion of the big gorgeous medium format negatives to be lost to cropping. The RB67 however allows the camera to remain on top of the tripod like a 6x6 camera at all times, making the switch between horizontal and vertical by rotating the back alone. This is done by means of the revolving back adapter, an attachment placed between the body an back. Normally this remains attached to the body as there is rarely a reason to remove it so some users may simply assume this is part of the body. It's and important thing to consider when purchasing an RB67 body alone as sellers might or might not include this component. Remember the back can't be attached to the body without one, even if you're willing to forego the revolving back feature.

At last we come to the finder which, it should be no surprise to learn is interchangeable and many types are available. Most common is the standard waist level finder that is similar just about every other WLF on other medium format cameras. There's no release button required to raise it, you simply pull up on top cover, under which you'll then find a small lever on the right that pops up the focus magnifier. While this is the most basic magnifier it's also the one I prefer, though anyone not accustomed to this type of viewer may find the left/right reversed viewfinder image difficult to adjust to. There is also an eye-level prism finder for those who prefer that fully corrects the view at the cost of some weight, but you're already dealing with 2.5 kg or more worth of camera already, so what's a little more? If you want to go a bit further there are also finders for the RB with metering and other special features. Of note finders are one of the few items made for the RB's sister model the Mamiya RZ67 that can be swapped between the two models. Since its the finder that carries the most visible camera model label it's not unusual to see an RB67 that has "Mamiya RZ67" emblazoned across the front.  

Well, that's all my heart can take this week. In future installments I'll be going into more detail with functional basics such as loading the film, changing lenses and so on, followed by a summary and a few final thoughts. I'm hoping to keep things on a semi-regular weekly schedule but apologies in advance if things are late as I'm expecting to integrate a bit more video as well as all the while I'm bringing a new element into my photographic world which... well, you'll see.

Meet the Beast: Part I

I confess, I've been holding out on you all. That camera I keep talking about, my photographic tool of choice since before this blog began, the Mamiya RB67, has been lurking in the background of much of what I've written in the past, perhaps somewhat mysteriously for those of you not acquainted with its marvels. It occurred to me some time ago that introductions were in order by way of a few episodes devoted to this camera along with all the agony and ecstasy of using one. It's something I could write about any time though, so I figured I'd keep it in reserve for a day I found myself struggling to find a topic. Instead, finding myself once more struggling with the opposite problem of trying to decide which of several topics to tackle next, it occurred to me that if I was waiting for writer's block to occur I might never get to it. And so it was decided I'll wait no longer.

While I have always referred simply to my Mamiya RB67, for the sake of accuracy I should state I have the RB67 Pro S, the penultimate model in the evolutionary sequence of RB67 versions released as updates were introduced. Actually I have two of them. The first one I purchased in September of 2013, complete with lens, 120 back and waist level finder, for under $200. It had a few scrapes and small dings, along with some sort of purple paint stains in the leatherette covering of the finder, but was absolutely functional. Currently undergoing a bit of cosmetic surgery on my basement worktable, it was demoted to a backup role last July when I got my hands on a prettier body via an opportunity purchase. I was really just looking for a good deal online on a second 120 back when I came upon a back, body and waist level finder at a price that was around the high end of what others were asking for a back alone. How could I not?

Back when I was in my twenties the RB67 easily made my short list of cameras I most dreamed to own. In fact if I actually kept such a list officially it probably would have spent more than its share of time at the top. Hasselblads are probably the more typical dream cameras but at the time (though definitely not now) square format was a bit of a turn off for me. The RB67 was really the one and only camera that hit every spot on my checklist - it's a full-fledged SLR that shot big negatives just this side of large format. takes interchangeable lenses backs and finders, shoots rectangular format so no film gets wasted cropping squares (keeping the images square, who does that?) but doesn't require flopping the camera to the side of the tripod to shoot vertical images. The only thing that kept me from owning one at that time was that they were priced into the stratosphere, affordable only to those who could make money with them and the very rich. The thought of owning one was a pipe-dream, almost on par with the Ferrari I wanted. 

Time moves on and many things change while others do not. Ferraris have gone from being the apex symbols of social status so many lust after but can't hope to ever afford to carbon spewing monstrosities so many lust after but can't hope to ever afford. Meanwhile, in that same time period the Mamiya RB67 has gone from being a well engineered, supremely capable photographic instrument considered the exclusive purview of professionals and the most dedicated of wealthy amateurs, to being  a well engineered, supremely capable photographic instrument a schmoe like me can pick up on eBay almost as an afterthought. The cameras haven't changed, it's just the pros who used them now have to satisfy customers for whom even the minute it takes a Polaroid to develop isn't instant enough. Think of that next time you hear laments about how rough it is being a film photographer in the digital age.

So kit-wise at least, my photographic world is pretty rosy, but while I now own the 23¹⁄₂ year old me's ideal camera plus a spare, now that I'm twice that age (and nearly half again the mass) my thoughts about what constitutes an ideal camera have changed. As I previously hinted at for example, while I once considered it wasteful to shoot square negatives and later crop to a rectangular print, I now often crop rectangular negatives to square images. Yes the 6x7cm negatives are nice when I don't do this but on the whole I think I'd give that up for the benefits of 6x6cm square negatives including 12 rather than 10 exposures per roll, easier storage and the ability to fit one roll of film onto a single 8"x10" contact sheet. That would be so if everything else were equal, but there's something else to consider - providing that extra centimetre's worth of negative costs quite a bit in terms of sheer mass. As I've noted time and again in the past, the Mamiya RB67 is a big heavy camera, and I don't just mean big in the way a medium format camera will be big if you're used to 35mm, Consider this - I put my Nikon FM with a 50mm f/1.4 lens on the kitchen scale and got about 860 grams.  A Hasselblad 500C/M with 80mm lens, 120 back and waist level finder comes in at 1555 grams (source: www.photoethnography.com), a 695 gram penalty to go from 35mm to medium format. On the same scale my RB67, 127mm lens, 120 back and waist level finder comes in at 2596 grams, more than an extra kilogram compared to the Hasselblad, itself a solidly build medium format camera.

The truth is Mamiya designed the RB67 to be a studio camera, luggability was never high on their desired traits list. One thing that was high on that list however, given the importance of dependably in the high volume professional environment for which they were intended, was ruggedness, meaning they're entirely up to the task of outdoor use where conditions are often less than ideal so long as one is prepared to bear the extra load. And this enduring performance, combined with their once near ubiquitous presence in professional studios, mean there is still an ample supply of RB67s on the used market today. This, combined with the limited market appeal they have due to their bulk, make the RB67 the current champion on  the used medium format SLR market in terms of performance/price ratio if you're willing to bear the load.

Granted that can be a pretty big if and for many that alone is a deal breaker. After a largely successful year and a half of ownership it still gives me pause. Even if you leave size and weight issues aside there are things anyone looking at an RB system should take into account in terms of operational and system considerations as well as a few downright quirks. We'll have to leave those for next time however when I'll go into more detail about what it's like to actually operate one of these beasties. 

When The Tourists Are Away...

In past entries I've noted how, as a local, Niagara Falls doesn't have the sort of magnetic draw on my camera lenses that seem to hold sway with visitors to the area. For the past several years however it's been my intent to visit during the much more photographically interesting and visitor sparse height of winter. Past years have not been kind to my plans. Last year I let the unusual cold take away my photographic mojo which only returned when things warmed up, and the several years prior to that were too warm for there to be a real dead of winter.

It didn't occur to me at a time but coated and weighed down by ice this tree reminds me of a Shetland Pony.

Though not quite so frigid as last year, this January has been accompanied by some solidly winter weather, and with my mojo fully intact I finally set out to ensure another year wouldn't pass without getting a crack at the area around the Falls. It wasn't so much the Falls itself I was after, though they too take on added interest in the presence of great quantities of ice. The real draw was the heavy glaze of ice that covers almost everything in the surrounding area. The mist rising from the torrent below that in warmer months drenches countless unprepared tourists begins to freeze on the surface of anything that doesn't move as the temperatures drop, turning trees and other fixed objects into virtual ice sculptures.

I brought what has become my standard kit - Mamiya RB67 Pro S with all four lenses for it I own, 50mm, 65mm, 127mm and 250mm, three backs loaded with Fuji Acros for black and white, Kodak Portra 160 for colour and a roll of 35mm Ilford Delta 100 with my home made 120 adapter for panoramas, Manfrotto 055 tripod, light meter, and the usual sundries like filters, cable release etc. I also brought along the Minolta Hi-Matic 9 loaded with some Fuji Superia 400 I've kept in the freezer for about ten years. As I write this I have yet to finish off any of the colour rolls I was shooting that day so images from those are yet to come. Also, as the 35mm roll in the RB67 back had been a partial roll, I was unaware that there was only one frame left and since it has to be unloaded in the darkroom when finished I was unable to reload in the field. 

These windows are part of an odd looking rail-car, the purpose of which I can't guess. It's enclosed in its own little fenced off enclosure suggesting it has some sort of historical value. It has plenty of character and I'd love to explore it with a camera more but the fence itself gets in the way. I was able to see a bit more this day though by standing on a show bank.

If rainbows in b&w are not your thing I did get a colour version of this which you may see once I finish the roll.

As anyone familiar with the RB67 will realize this is quite a load, but my middle aged, desk job soft self can still manage a haul of a few KM over reasonable terrain when I've got it all loaded into the big photo backpack. That's pretty much what I set myself up to do when as usual I chose the free parking at the Dufferin Islands park and walked the rest of the way. I might have saved myself some effort had I realized that not only was this normally heavily maintained area neglected in the off-season, and that likewise they don't bother maintaining the tourist premium parking rates closer to the Falls when there are next to no tourists arriving. Though I could have avoided the slog, it's over now and I burned off all those extra calories.

If I had it to do over again, and with at a good month or more of winter yet to come I guess I do, I think I would have been better served if I had left the Mamiya at home in this case in favour of a Nikon used hand-held. Shooting tripod mounted is almost habitual for me but in this case I felt it held me back from exploring all the compositional options I found myself confronted with. I was glad of the Hi-Matic I brought with me, allowing me to be a little more free-wheeling though with one of the Mamiya backs loaded with Portra I found myself wishing I had loaded it with black and white film.

The one panoramic image I was able to get on 35mm film adapted to the RB67. As I had no idea how many shots were on the partial roll to begin with there was no way to know that there was only one exposure remaining and as it had to be removed in the darkroom I couldn't put in a fresh roll in the field.

Matters of shooting style aside however, this was one day that using a waist level finder, currently my only option with the RB67, put me at a disadvantage. This isn't always the case, and in fact there are times when using a waist level finder has been a revelation. For example landscape shots featuring a prominent foreground object often require shooting from an angle low enough to have an eye-level finder user crawling on their belly to frame up the shot. Even when the shot doesn't require such low angles, shooting with a camera held at chest level rather than the same height we are used to seeing the world from can subtly add interest to images through the slightly unfamiliar point of view. Putting my armchair psychologist hat on the lower eye level implied may even be suggestive of a child's point of view, triggering whatever emotional responses that might involve for a particular viewer. This waist-level point of view has been noted as an important component in Vivian Maier's style. Perhaps the child's perspective would also make sense in the work of the word's most (belatedly) famous TLR toting nanny. 

There's a flip side to this of course, as obtaining a perspective higher than waist-level requires a step ladder or some reasonable substitute. For example, in image at the top of the post I was aware that the top of the tree intersected with the top of the falls and that I could remedy this by raising the height of the camera but as I need to look down on the camera from above to see what was in the shot, doing so would have left me shooting blind. Like most medium format SLRs the RB67 has interchangeable viewfinders and I have considered getting an eye-level finder for situations like this. Of course to really benefit I'd have to bring along both finders and switch as needed, adding yet another item to an already heavy pack. Not as heavy as carrying a step-ladder with me mind you, so I may yet do this.

There are more images to come. The images here are from the first roll of Fuji Acros that went through the Mamiya as well as the aforementioned single panoramic image on 35mm film. In addition to the colour images still in camera there's a second roll of Acros with images from that day that's also waiting to be finished. As always I'll keep you posted.  

How I Learned to Hate Scanning Less

One of the unsung heroes in my photographic arsenal is my Epson Perfection V500 scanner. While not as hyped in the flatbed film scanning world as it's large format capable siblings in the V700/800 series, for medium format on down it's nearly as capable at a fraction of the cost. The slightly over $100 (Cdn) clearance price I picked it up for is quite possibly the best money I have ever spend on photographic equipment of any kind.

My praise of just about everything about this scanner ends however at the included negative carriers. They're flimsy yes, though considering they're meant to hold precious one of a kind original images one would hope they wouldn't need to endure anything approaching man-handling. (Speaking as a man I'm not sure if I resent that term.) More to the point however it is notoriously difficult to get negatives into them, a difficulty that seems to grow exponentially with the degree of film curl present in those negatives. Two strips of 35mm film can be placed in the 35mm holder so they are held relatively securely at one end, leaving the remainder of the strips entirely loose so they must be manipulated to stay aligned in their frames as the top part of the frame holder, an entirely separate piece, is clipped into place over them. The 120 holder has next to nothing to keep the negative strip in place until the the hinged top of the frame is closed, an operation which itself tends to push them out of place and efforts to hold it in place may result in the film buckling. Further, once closed I would often find the negative had shifted enough to require a small reposition leaving me to decide whether it was better to start the whole operation over again or trying to adjust it with the carrier clamped closed which always had me worried about scratching or otherwise damaging the negative (though I don't know that any actual harm ever resulted from this).

The stock 120 carrier for the Epson Perfection V500 (above)
along with the Lomography 120 DigtaLIZA (below.)

Enter the Lomography DigitaLIZA, an alternative negative/transparency carrier with a unique positioning and loading system that among other things is supposed to avoid most of the problems common to other carriers such as the ones I have experienced. It is also, apparently, exact enough to allow 35mm negatives to be held by the very edge of the film, allowing the sprocket hole area of the film to be part of the scan. The trick involves a metal plate that sits in the bottom of the frame bringing everything flush to the ledge the film sits on. After positioning the film an upper magnetic plate is positioned on top, clamping to the metal plate underneath, sandwiching the film flat and exactly in place. The hinged frame can now be closed without fear the film will shift in the process, at which time the upper plate can be pulled free, releasing the lower plate while the film remains perfectly in place.

If it's a bit convoluted to describe in words Lomography hosts a video showing the process which you can see here.

This much you could have learned from the Lomography site, so how does all of this translate into practice? After fighting with the Epson carriers one too many times I decided it was worth a go. Much of the fanfare surrounding the DigitaLIZA focuses on the 35mm version's ability to make include nearly the full width of the film during scanning including the sprocket holes.  Photographers who use adapters to shoot 35mm film in medium format cameras or other tricks to get an image across the whole width of the film have few other practical choices for getting this additional image width scanned. While I experiment with techniques like this myself, 120 film is by far the majority of what I shoot these days, and its the format I struggle with the most using the stock carriers, so it was the medium format version that I ordered. At the time of this writing the 120 DigitaLIZA goes for $45 (US) in the Lomography store, but with a bit of shopping around may be found for less through some resellers.

It arrived in attractively designed custom box that makes it tempting to carefully repackage the unit after every use rather than toss it in a drawer. If the box board thin Epson carrier struck me as a little flimsy before it seems even more so compared the the DigitaLIZA, especially when the metal bottom plate is attached. Despite the more rugged build the film is still sits in the holder at about the same distance from the scanner glass as is the case with the stock Epson carrier.

The DigitaLIZA's frame window is wide enough to accommodate three 6x6 negatives at once. If you shoot square format and cut film into strips of four you'll have to reposition the film once to scan the whole strip. Since I primarily shoot 6x7 negatives the window will allow only two negatives to be scanned, so a repositioning will again be required to scan a strip of three. By itself this is an improvement over the Epson carrier, which permits only two 6x6 negatives to be scanned at a time, only one at a time for larger 120 formats, and if you shoot panoramic formats larger than 6x12 you could be in trouble.

The bigger point however isn't how often negatives have to be repositioned, it's how easy they are to position in the first place. If all my negatives layed dead flat I probably wouldn't have too much to complain about with the Epson carrier but even a bit of curl is enough to make positioning the frame properly without risking damage or getting fingerprints all over the image into a struggle. To look at Lomography's video demo it would seem like loading the DigiaLIZA couldn't be simpler, but does the seemingly foolproof mechanism go this smoothly in actual use?

Well, for the most part yes, yes it does. When the negative strip is first placed in the carrier it sits in a recess deep enough to keep the edges of the film from going anywhere. This is in contrast the stock carrier's ledge which is much too shallow to keep the film from sliding around or buckling, something that tends to happen as the hinged frame is closed, The DigitaLIZA further largely avoids problems keeping the film held in place while the top part of the holder is closed down with the magnetic top plate that is put in place once the negative strip is aligned, holding it there until the hinged lid is closed at which plate it can be removed without risk of the film slipping out of place. I say largely avoids because with more severely curled film I find getting the top plate in place without the film moving can be a small challenge, though nothing compared to the struggle that would be needed to get the same images ready to scan with the stock carrier. This small difficulty aside the DigitaLIZA's loading mechanism aside it has worked for me as advertised.

Once loaded however the DigitaLIZA does have a downside compared to Epson's carriers for the V500 however - there is no provision to get it positioned correctly on the scanning bed. This might not be a concern at all with large format units that can scan the entire area of the scanning bed, but the V500 and similar flatbeds designed for smaller formats require the film to be lined up under the transparency scanning strip in the lid. The stock carriers are designed to align with this automatically. As a universal carrier, the DigitaLIZA has no such provision. Lining things up by eye would probably be good enough to get the entire negative into the scanning zone, but it almost certainly wouldn't be square to the edge. In cases like this it\s necessary to come up with some sort of alignment device. A simple cardboard strip of appropriate width would do the trick, though I found I could use the lower plate from the DigitaLIZA's magnetic positioning system does the job admirably and I suspect this would be the case for most scanners.

A comparison of scans from the Epson Perfection V500 using the stock 120
 negative carrier and the 120 version of the Lomography DigitaLIZA.

The only question that remained is whether there was any impact on the scan quality. Might the magnetic sandwich positioning system hold the film flatter leading to sharper scans? Might the film to scan bed distance differ from what is spec for my scanner making scans a little less sharp. I put this one to the test scanning by scanning the same image using both carriers and to my eye the results are functionally identical. If you'd rather judge for yourself I include the comparison images above for your own consideration. The insets show crops at full resolution from identical areas of each scan made at 3200 dpi. (Click to bring the image up at full resolution.)

The bottom line is that, at the cost of auto alignment provisions you may get with a flatbed film scanner's stock carriers, the DigitaLIZA addresses the shortcomings these carriers are often plagued with in regards to positioning and loading of negatives and transparencies. Not only is this task made easier While the 35mm's big selling feature, the ability scan the width of the film out to and including the sprocket holes, does not apply to the 120 version, this benefit alone may make the DigitaLIZA well worth the price in terms of saved time and diminished risk of damaging irreplaceable images as a result of buckling, scratching or throwing the whole mess at a wall in frustration.