I had a very good photographic experience recently whilst working in Europe. A colleague loaned me an old Yashica 6x6 medium format film camera to use around the city. I had deep reservations about doing so but once I started to use it, I found it to be an extremely valuable refresher in photographic practice in general.

The process of taking a good picture now has become so diluted by electronic trickery and the inherent disposable nature of the digital format, that as a technical (and to some extent, creative) skill, it’ s almost valueless. I found that by using this old medium format camera, it commanded a lot more concentration for a variety of reasons.

First off, using a camera like this is about as far removed from point and shoot as you could hope to be – there are no scene modes, no auto exposure, no image stabilisation and definitely no auto-focus. Composing a good image in focus in the viewfinder is almost an art form in itself before you even start worrying about fiddling with all the various arcane dials and switches.

Secondly, you only get around a dozen shots to a roll of film which means you have to take a lot of time considering the shots you want to take and how you take them as the ability to fire off endless volumes of images only to be deleted at will later on simply doesn’t exist. The film isn’t exactly expensive or hide to find but processing it can be another matter.

So, you might ask yourself why would I be recommending doing this to you? The answers are simple. The results from this format can be quite beautiful and capture far more detail and clarity than a prosumer digital SLR ever could. The regimen of taking photography like this can be a huge help to you when you step back into the digital world as you will have learned far more about lighting, exposure, composition, depth of field etc without relying on the camera to do what IT thinks is best for you.

Old cameras can be picked up very cheaply these days and even a brand new high end model with lens will only be as much as a regular DSLR if you shop around for one. So give it a go if you feel like it but don’t look at it as taking a step backwards but rather, taking a step in the right direction.

Lot's of food for thought in that above piece Phil. I must humbly admit that I have not looked back since I went digital ....my bad. What a fascinating experience you must have had...one that I will certainly entertain.
Thanks for sharing that experience with us :=)

I used to shoot with a Cannon A-1 at university (30 years ago). Pretty mixed bag of results, mostly bad looking back. Film whilst not expensive made experimentation and practice difficult. I have progressed much more in my photography - even if it doesn't show - since going digital and being able to take lots of pictures, with different angles etc. There are some benefits to your idea and being old and grey there are somethings I like about the old ways that I have kept even after going digital. The one reason I bought my Leica D-LUX was that it made manual photography easy, as well as having RAW, in a P&S format, something I use quite a lot, especially on more staged pictures.

Now I think about it, my A1 had most of the auto functions that my Leica has. Appature/shutter priority, program AE mode. But, no auto focus and no stabilization. AF is a pain anyway and I tend to have it in manual most of the time and I can live without stabilization. The one thing I don't miss about the A1, the weight! And the bag with all those lenses and filters and spare rolls of film and macro rings. Now I remember why I went digital.

You are right of course. Limiting the number of pictures and not having all the automation makes you think about a photograph before you commit to it and thus should improve all your pictures. Will I go back to film? Not with the A1, and probably not with anything else as my manual photography is not so good without seeing test shots first. I would like a good quality ISO 64 B&W film and might get some incredible shots, but I am not sure it would be successful. I like the idea of the picture quality, but what matter film quality if the picture itself is so badly taken. I shall stick to digital, but try to learn the lessons. Now if I got a 512Mb memory card I only get 20 shots in raw. Does that count?

not so much, no ;-)

you shoot with a DSLR and you still have to carry around all the lenses and paraphernalia. You must also remember that whilst film cameras may have auto focus/exposure etc (actually, I think only one 6x6 camera has auto focus) they don't have all the image processing engines that do all the work 'behind the scenes' in digitals that allow many people to - misguidedly - pronounce, that their images are fresh form the can with no processing work done to them.

sounds like you've already done your journeyman work and learned the lessons so this experiment could be of more use to the 'master' digital photographers/analogue virgins who need to find out there's more to learn than turning the dial to auto and taking boil in the bag landscapes or shooting fish in a barrel at their local zoo/bird sanctuary/botanical gardens etc.

Or, like me, just use it as a refresher to sharpen things up a little and bring you back from the jaded apathy that using digital technology can induce.

You get a big bright view of the world through those medium format cameras too, which can’t be matched by any digital camera that I have used.

Leica-S2 or Hasselblad H3D medium format digital cameras might be interesting, but price is a little steep. Sorry, this is beside the point of the thread which is to hone technique by going back to manual systems and learning or re-learning the techniques that make for better photographs in digital or film.

yes they are interesting but as you say - you'll need around 20 grand to get into that game before you even consider any lenses for them also :-)

I would personally recommend for this experiment - a cheap and cheerful no frills model such as the old Yashica that was loaned to me.

eBay's got 3 Yashica 6x6s up right now. One's got a bid of only $5, another's at $55, and the third's at $149.95.