Tag Archive for: Mamiya

Mamiya Leaf workshop New York

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During our stay in New York I taught 2 different workshops.
The first one was for our friends from Mamiya/Leaf.
As you all probably know I’m a huge fan of shooting Medium Format, the image quality is “something else”.
I’ve started shooting medium format digital a few years ago and started out with a Mamiya digital back which, to put it mildly, actually didn’t life up to it’s expectations, my second back was much better, a Leaf Aptus 22. A 22MP back which at that time was a bump in resolution from my Canon 5D, but it was not the resolution I fell in love with, it was the dynamic range and most of all the look of the images, now this is very hard to explain but the images just look more 3D.

Leaf Mamiya workshop 3086-Edit

My very first experience with a medium format camera was during a professional imaging tradeshow some years ago when one of the Hasselblad representatives handed me one of their H2D bodies with back, at that point I thought I would never ever shoot medium format because of the price difference between a DSLR and medium format, however… when I retouched the files back home my mind changed and before I knew it I bought my first system.

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Some film scans

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As you all know I love shooting film, there is something special about it.
I won’t say it’s better than digital, just different.
I do have to add that we recently switched from the Epson V750 scanner to a Reflecta MF5000 and that difference is pretty huge, I dare to say that the scans from my Mamiya RZ67ProII actually out resolves my 36MP Sony A7r but then again you can’t really compare the two, where digital is razor sharp film is very detailed but not “razor” sharp, it’s just ….. well pretty sharp. But that is judged on screen, as soon as you print it does look razor sharp and in essence that’s where it counts.

 

For me shooting film is that “different look” it’s a bit more organic and I love the large frame from the RZ67ProII, I use that camera also with my Leaf Credo60 but on the RZ it results in a pretty severe crop (although the Credo is actually slightly bigger than a 6×4.5). With film all that is gone and you can enjoy the huge real estate the camera gives you.

 

These shots were done during a shoot with Nadine on location and were shot with the RZ67ProII with a 110mm f2.8 lens (closed down because we used strobes) on FujiFilm RPII positive film. Development of the film I did at home with the appropriate E6 chemicals.

 

One tip if you are into film, make sure you invest in good scanning software, this makes a HUGE difference.
I’ve been using Silverfast studio for quiet some time and when I switched from the Epson software to Silverfast the difference was very noticeable, now with the Reflecta MF5000 Silverfast really shines, it’s not the fastest to learn software but if you scan in basic mode you pretty much are good from the get go, if you dive into it there is however an enormous amount of extra detail to be extracted from the files.

 

These files were scanned with one pass (double pass gives you a bit more dynamic range), and are straight out of the scanner, only thing changed is a slight touch up of the skin.
Nadine arnhem 12-Edit

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Glamour with a twist (NSFW)

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Today Tamlyn was our model for the Glamour workshop.
The glamour workshops are most of the time the workshop were we have room to experiment with different methods of lighting, but also with concepts and of course accessories. For today I decided to use some materials with reflective and translucent qualities. By using these low cost materials I was hoping to trigger the students to think about lighting in a totally different way.

The most heard “complaint” I hear from students is that they are stuck with the same lightsetups, the same kind of models and are simply put not going forward. With the workshops I can of course teach people how to understand the theory behind light, and show things like measuring etc. But sometimes the students need something more, or as you could say a different view on light and shooting. As mentioned glamour is the perfect workshop for this, so let’s see what we’ve done today.

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Amarens backstage video

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As promised, the backstage video we shot during the Amarens photoshoot last week.
See the blog post here : https://frankdoorhof.com/web/?p=1253
As always feel free to comment and share.
Remember these videos are made just for fun to give you the visitors of this blog a glimpse backstage.