#MAMIYA 7 II DIGITAL BACK PRO#

I invested in a Minolta Dimage Mutli Pro which lasted me just over a year until the Firewire chip went on it. This is something I advise anyone who is going to embark on medium format film - the negative is only as good as the scanner that will extract your image, unless of course you’re doing contact prints straight from your neg. If I got only 25% of what the negative could yield, I would have stopped and just continued with 35mm. I also realised that it would end up frustrating me no end knowing that even a cheap flatbed which would scan 6 x 7 would never extract all the quality available from the negative. My nature being on the good side of obsessive means that I would never have been happy with continuing shooting MF and making do with mid-res scans from my lab - I already owned a very good scanner for 35mm, a Reflecta 10T, which gave me up to 4000 DPI, but sadly it wouldn’t scan any format other than 35mm. Obviously, for daytime I could be a bit looser with these rules but generally, due to my preference for low speed film, a tripod has become a tool which is inevitably strapped to my backpack. Through this learning phase, though, I found I had to work very differently - tripod, cable release, light meter and a careful thought process as to where I was shooting and what my film stock of choice would be. The Mamiya with its slower lenses turned whatever charm I could extract out of the smaller format into a mess of grain and muddied dark areas. Whatever I learnt from 35mm had to be scrapped. On the first few outings with it, I treated it with, well, I don’t want to say disrespect but I was still very much in the 35mm mindset, where a fast lens could get me out of a pickle, and heavy grain in underexposed areas would just be something I could simply leave in as part of the beautiful aesthetic of film. Having never held one before I simply asked to hold it and that was enough for me to dive head first into medium format. My local shop had one and I was simply there at the right time.

I bought this camera very much on a whim. Equally, I didn’t want to go back to digital to get a cleaner look as, for me, the experience of shooting film was far more appealing. I found on occasion I didn’t simply want the charm of 35mm and having to simply embrace its (apparent) imperfections or its limitations. I was now looking for a way I could incorporate medium format into my workflow, besides the simple allure of “bigger” and “better.” By this point I had stopped making video my artistic priority and was focusing totally on stills. While I explored the wonders of 35mm film, which suited my aesthetic and what I needed from my work, I began reading more into medium format and its benefits. Moving onto film, I started out with 35mm which retained dynamic range and colour but added grain and that certain je ne c’est quoi that film provides. Having a background in film, it allowed me to understand light from the off and simply apply this knowledge to stills.Īlthough I shot digitally on crop sensor cameras, it wasn’t until I got a Nikon D810 with its vast dynamic range that my eyes were opened to the possibilities of what i could do with single frames. In my mind, one of the traits of a cinematic look, aside from framing and colour interplay, is the balance of light.

My background and journey through visuals came from film and video so my tastes have always been based in the “cinematic” look - a term which gets bandied around a lot. With photography, however, as with anything reliant on a visual element, it’s difficult to grasp the true meaning of words - you have to see it to understand it. I remember when I began shooting film three years ago, I kept hearing about medium format and its benefits. I also work as a content producer for mpb.com. My name is Ian Howorth and I’m a documentary photographer from Brighton, England.

Mamiya 7 ii digital back