Twin Lens Toys – Cameras on Loan

I’ve got a new, well old but new to me, toy to play with!

With the dominance of digital photography today, there’s a growing number of photographers going back to film, for various reasons. Whether it’s for the cool retro aspect, the artistic possibilities afforded by film, the features of film that digital has yet to replicate or the desire to return to basics without the help of auto-everything, film is making a comeback.

I’ve been inspired by some of my buddies such as Brian, the_wolf_brigade, and others, I asked my dad if I could borrow his old twin lens reflex camera. With great excitement, I picked up dad’s two cameras (a Yashica-Mat and a Rolleicord) the other day, and with a hint of pride, dad walked me through the features and controls.

One of the things that excites me about trying this camera is that it takes medium format film. I’m used to shooting on a cropped sensor, approximately 24mm diagonal. These medium format cameras shoot on frames 64mm diagonal. That’s a huge image area, and on a fine grain film, the detail captured will be incredible.

All I need to do now is get some film, and start shooting! I can’t wait :) Look for the results of my experiments in the future, once I’ve shot, developed, printed and scanned the photos.

The setup

Today I thought I’d try a slightly different way of doing the photos. I saw a fantastic video on product lighting at ProPhotoLife, and remembered I had a small sheet of perspex lying around, so I decided to give it a go. I like this technique! It has some real potential. Here’s the setup shot: