MamiyaRB7

For those of you who don't know or can't read whats written on the camera is a Mamiya RB67, a gift I have bought myself for a joint Birthday/Christmas present. She (definitely a girl!) is a pro S and was made between 1974 and 1990 (not searched her family history yet) and is completely manual, as in everything is mechanical and adjusted by hand, there is not a single battery involved!

I have bought her for 3 reasons really. Firstly she has the same initials as me, secondly I just love the engineering and design wonderment of being able to see every bit move as you make an adjustment and finally, as much as anyone else have become a slight victim of the overshooting curse of digital. This is not me saying I won't take as many photographs as I have done, if anything I will probably take more, but I want to reinforce the disciplines of patience, consideration and restraint. This applies more to my personal work than commissions but there is less of a distinct line between those two these days, it can be all too easy to fill several 4GB memory cards (about 130 frames on a Canon 5D mk3) only to have to edit down the results once back in the studio. With medium format film it is over £2 each time you press the shutter, something that certainly focus the mind on the job at hand!!

I doubt I'll be shooting very many family portrait commissions with the RB67 but who knows I might fire of a few polaroids during a shoot as a rather unique memento of the wonder that is engineering and chemistry  is this digital age. 

n.b. I feel a sense of irony that I took these images with my iPhone! Image-making is image-making in the end!