As I mentioned in a previous post, someone was kind enough to give me a camera which they were no longer using - and not just any old camera, a Mamiya 6 rangefinder. I really like rangefinder style photography, having used the Leica M8 and Epson RD-1 in the past, but their respective technical limitations took a certain amount of the pleasure out of it. With a film camera, though, it's the film which makes the difference. I've only shot two full rolls with it, both of Fuji's Neopan Acros 100, but from that I've got 12 pictures which I feel reasonably confident putting up. I just finished a roll of Velvia 50 with it too, so that should feature in a future post once I've had it developed and scanned it.

Anyway. The pictures.

This first one was mainly to see how the film handled having a hugely bright light source (i.e. the sun) in the photo. I tried to trust the metering as far as possible, but it needed a bit of dodging and burning afterwards.

There was some nice late afternoon light here, and the fence made a nice leading line through the picture, so it was just a question of waiting for some people to turn up.

Path. Again, kind of a test shot to see how the film handled the darks and lights.

When you get the right light, shooting these incense bowl things is quite a lot of fun.

The next shots are from Gozaisho, as referenced in the last entry. I took some colour film, some digital (with the Sigma, which will be along in a different post) and the Mamiya. This first one was another waiting game; without someone in that particular spot, the photo would be rather empty and boring.

Gozaisho is kind of a metaphor for Japan: you have to go through all manner of what seems like petty stuff to get to it, but when you do the payoff is absolutely worth it. It helped that we were there on a day with some majorly variable weather - mist and clouds appearing and disappearing at considerable speed. When the clouds parted and a small sliver of light peeked through, that was the time to hit the shutter.

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Even without the sun, there were some pretty atmospheric moments.

The next shot is from a sort of shopping centre - cum - family park which is in the nearest town. I wasn't thinking of it at the time, but afterwards I realised that this somehow reminded me of the famous "Behind the Gare St Lazare" shot of Henri Cartier Bresson, at least the little girl who conveniently ran across as I was lining up the shot.

Last shot of this entry was one of those "I have one shot left on this roll and I want to get it developed, but I don't want to shoot just anything" pictures; I went for a walk near my apartment and there was this scene with some strong, but directional, light. This was hardly processed at all; it is, barring some very light dodging and burning, how it came back on the negative.

The next entry will either be the Sigma shots from Gozaisho, or the Velvia pictures from the Mamiya. Oh, the suspense...

Thanks for looking!