Medium Format from Athens

I love medium format. Some of my favourite all time pictures have been shot with 120 film, and whilst my weapon of choice has long since been my beloved Hasselblad 500CM, a few years back I bought another classic – the Rolleiflex 2.8E. It is a gorgeous, twin lens reflex camera, that I had always wanted. The lens is famously sharp, and its subtle shutter click comes in stark contrast to the offensively loud THERWACK of the Blad.

Despite loving the Rolleiflex, I haven’t really done it much justice – at least not in the past few years. That is partly because of my general apathy towards film, but also because medium format is really especially suited towards a type of picture that I haven’t really shot as much. With only 12 exposures on a single roll, you need to be slow, deliberate, and have something that is worth capturing to justify the cost. It isn’t really a snapshot kind of deal.

When I decided to shoot film on my recent trip to Greece, it seemed like a good opportunity to crack out the Rolleiflex – though I was in two minds. It isn’t exactly a small or lightweight thing to pack, and it seemed like it might be overkill with the other cameras I had. In the end, I’m glad I took it. My only regret is not making more use of it, sooner than I did.

It was over a week into the trip before I felt comfortable enough to give the Rolleiflex a bash – at the Panathenaic Stadium. Unfortunately, it took me about twenty minutes to load the first roll into the damn thing, as it had been that long since I had last used it. I made all of the predictable mistakes like putting it in backwards, ripping the paper, not running the film under the rollers, etc. Steph (pictured below) watched me the entire time with this blank expression.

The colour pictures from the stadium were shot with old rolls of Kodak Portra 400 from my stash, which expired back in 2007. Given their age, they came out quite nicely. I did throw in a wildcard roll of fresh Kodak Gold 200 later on, but the difference was fairly minimal – to my eyes anyway.

Despite burning through a few rolls, I kind of did so in a last minute panic, and so there isn’t a huge amount of variation in terms of the faces or places, but I still like how they came out.

I didn’t just shoot colour either, getting through a couple of rolls of Kodak TriX 320 – which was probably almost as old as the Portra.

Spot the film that I loaded incorrectly…

I had forgotten just how difficult it can be to nail the focus with the Rolleiflex waist level finder, especially at f2.8, and since my eyesight is terrible. The hit rate of pictures I’d consider worthy is much lower than with my Leica M6 as a result – but then with medium format, quantity can never be the goal.

As the sun was setting one day, I decided to push the roll of Kodak TMY-400 that was loaded, up to 1600. The negatives were clearly under-exposed, and the results very grainy – but they still looked pretty cool – and came out much better than I expected them to.

I did run into a couple of problems with the Rolleiflex this time around – perhaps as a result of dropping it onto the marble floor of our apartment. The advance lever sometimes didn’t seem to stop correctly, I screwed up loading the film once or twice (it’s different to what I am used to with the Hasselblad), and I had a couple of double exposures as a result. It’s probably about time I got the thing serviced to be fair. After all, it’s about 70 years old.

Of course, with all of that resolution, you can crop down easily.

This trip has definitely inspired me to shoot more film, more regularly – and in particular – to not be afraid of using medium format more regularly. Yes, it may well feel like a ridiculous extravagance to pack or carry about some massive chunk of metal and glass that can only expose 12 frames per roll… rolls that cost a considerable amount to purchase and process… and yes, it may be incredibly difficult to nail the focus with. But… there’s something about the practice and also results from 120 that I always love. I need to start using it more often again. Like I used to. 2024 is the year for that.