
This last few weeks I’ve been shooting in my backyard as a precursor to shooting portraits of people. Natural lighting is the focus, while I get my chops down with shooting manual settings with 120mm film. I’ve been alternating between shooting with an Mamiya RZ67 and an RB67 with a Mamiya 50mm f/4.5 C Lens.

I loaded the camera with Fujifilm Velvia 100F slide film. There’s a very low latitude for getting the exposure right, but I kinda like the results of these low-key shots, shot near the end of the day.

Shooting in the backyard of our Sunset home, reminds me of when I was a kid, and I used to shoot black cats with a polaroid camera, in my backyard in Southern Oregon. There’s a little adventure in shooting film, anticipating to see what will come back from the developers.

I eyed, the exposure on this one, but with the Mamiya RZ67 I had been using a Sekonic analog light meter to get the exposures I wanted.

& sometimes there are mishaps with shooting with medium format systems like Mamiya

In fact, I f-ed up and loaded two rolls onto the same spool, and on another roll, I had exposed the film. The Darkroom.com gave me a free developing ticket for that one, thanks! Darkroom. 🤩 👍

Like Forrest’s mom suggests, ‘you never know what you’re going to get’ – It’s these little imperfections in the process and the results, that makes if fun & rewarding to shoot various cameras and films.