Film photography with a Rolleiflex
I have acquired a new, and rather fascinating toy! having used film cameras for the early part of my career, and then jumping ship to the new fangled digital cameras, computers and software, hard drives, cables and SD cards, I have suddenly fallen back in love with film cameras again! and not just any film camera, but a 1955 Rolleiflex 3.5. It has twin lenses, a ‘back to front’ viewing screen, and a big old winding-on lever. It takes a while to load the film, a while to get used to viewing the image, a while to focus the lens (especially when using the ‘new fangled’ close up lenses which screw on the front of the 75mm standard lenses) and it takes a while to get the results back from the very few labs that process the film and scan it for me! (many thanks to the so far excellent service from Photographique in Bristol and Analogue Wonderland). All in all, compared to digital its been a real ‘faff’…. BUT every part of this has been wonderful… it’s real ‘Slow Photography’, there is a real community online, and I have been inspired to keep this beast of a camera around my neck, when, perhaps, I have recently been feeling a little jaded with the (amazing, it has to be said) Canon R5 that I use for the day to day photography. I must mention one book that has been an inspiration recently, Il Dolce Far Niente: The Italian Way of Summer, by Lucy Laucht… I only realised, having been enjoying the book for some time, that all the images within were shot on an ‘old film camera’, in between her day-to-day work shoots. They look fabulous and have a real atmosphere that I think may have been difficult to capture with the same joy that these obviously were. Bravo!
Here are some new images, photographed on the Rolleiflex… just look at that old school ‘film’ look… these were shot on Kodak Gold 200 asa and all shot had held. The camera has a remarkable lens, as crisp as you can get, and just lovely, especially considering that it’s been in a loft space for years! The last image was taken using a close up lens that I got for twenty quid on eBay. And I have fallen for the square format completely, taking me back to the days when I shot on a Hasselblad CM. All in all I am loving this slow motion work; it’s ponderous and time consuming, but ultimately so satisfying! I’m wondering whether there is a way for me to take this further, work-wise… watch this space!
The shots above were taken in RHS Rosemoor Garden in Devon, and in my back garden…