portrait photographer – tim dobbs photography

Since getting my Mamiya 645 the other week I have been on the lookout for a 150mm lens to shoot portraits with. A facebook friend who just happens to run West Yorkshire Cameras http://wycameras.com/ messaged me after reading my last blog post to say he had a Mamiya Sekor 150mm f4 for sale if I was interested at a very, very reasonable price :-).

Needless to say I bought it immediately and when it arrived it was a lovely piece of kit. The only problem now was that my scanner an Epson v330 photo would only scan 35mm not medium format so more expenditure was need, luckily there was a sale on in PC World and I managed to pickup an Epson v500 http://bit.ly/VvbQBZ

The scanner is an awesome machine I re-scanned some of my recent negatives which I was very happy with originally and there was a noticeable difference especially in the highlight and shadow detail captured.

I eagerly shot a roll of Fuji 400H pro and rushed into the darkroom to see the results the lens produced.

What I did notice after scanning and viewing in Photoshop was the extreme shallow depth of field even at f8 when using the longer focal length which when my focus was spot on really made the subject appear almost 3d.

To get the best results at F4 I would have to use a tripod and spend a bit of time making sure that what I wanted to be in focus was spot on because there is little margin for error when wide open.

The type of look this camera and lens gives me is exactly what I want when taking a portait and something I cannot come close to using my crop sensor digital slr’s.

I can get something similar using a film slr and a 100mm f2.8 but the quality of the negative is so much better at 6 x 4.5.

I now have taken over two shelves in the fridge with my films since stocking up on Kodak T-Max 100, Portra 400 and some Ilford Delta 400 in 120 format.

click on an image to view larger…….

As anyone who has viewed my blog over the last few months would have guessed that I have been smitten with shooting film again after years of digital DSLr’s.

I have been very lucky that I have a few photographer friends who have vast vintage camera collections and are very trusting to loan me a few cameras to feed my addiction…..lol

The 1st camera I tried was the Agfa Isolette from Andrew Beveridge an excellent Wedding and portrait photographer http://www.silverbirchphotography.com/ I struggled with the 1st roll as I am not used to using a light-meter or the zone focus system employed by this camera but the 2nd roll was far better after using a tape measure to make sure of the subject distance.

The Yashica Mat and the Zorki 4 were from Mike Stokes http://www.flickr.com/photos/opobs/ also http://www.opobs.co.uk/ He has had both cameras for many years and informed me that he has never had much luck with the Yashica Mat as it was always over exposing so he resorted to using tape on his light meter to change the exposure reading to compensate for the problem.

The very same thing happened with my 1st roll but after scanning the negs I managed to save a couple of frames, next roll I will set my meter to at least 2 stops under to see what happens.

I found out that the Zorki 4 had a sticking shutter as it has not been used for years and 1/3rd of every frame was totally burned out but after loads of clicking of the shutter over the weekend it seemed to have done the trick as the 2nd roll exposed fine.

Using all 3 of these cameras has been a pleasure and I would like to thank Andrew and Mike for letting me try them out. I will post some photos from these cameras in my next post.