Have you seen the pictures on a Hasselblad Xpan? The landscape format is ridiculous. It's amazing. Have you seen the price? It's nuts! It’ll cost you more than £4k online and no, I haven’t got that kind of money. So I thought to myself, how am I gonna get that sort of look on a budget?
I came across 35mm to 120mm adapters which you pop into any medium format camera. You can grab some from Analogue Wonderland. I decided to go out with my Ikon Zeiss Nettar with some Kodak Gold and had a play. Check out the results in the video here.
Not sure how the large orange halation came about in the centre of the negative. I think it's to do with the lens and maybe perhaps there's too much exposure in the centre, than on the sides of the film. I'm not sure how to reduce that effect.
I think it looks cool, but it'd be interesting to see how it looks without it. I've tried in post to reduce it down and so forth, but not much luck. If you know how to get rid of that effect, let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you because I think if I can solve this, then there will be some absolutely amazing pictures that you can take on 35mm
As you can see from some of the images that I've taken with this the first time, there's been occasional areas where there's been a double exposure or the reel's not been moved along fully. I was moving this dial about one and a half turns, stroke two turns each time, to see what I could get. Clearly a very subjective way of trying to figure out how far the film had moved along the back. Next time, I'm going to do a little bit more experimentation, figure out this dial. Once I've got that nailed, I think there's some real potential, some wonderful shots with this.
Some of the images have been cut off from below, and I think that's to do with the fact that I was looking through the visor here, and forgetting that it's got a medium format backing.
Next time, by lowering my perspective a little bit from where I am so as to not shoot from eye length and a bit more from the hip will probably be about the right sweet spot. Perhaps to get around it, would be to get a film strip and stick it on the back of your camera here. This allows for some visualisation . Again, it is shooting by trial and error, but once you've done it a few times, I think, again, the potential is looking good.
Thank you to Analogue Wonderland for actually making and producing these things. Definitely, if you've got a medium format camera, throw in some 35 millimetre in, and you'll see what kind of images you can get.
I think, if you love photography, you're always exploring new ways of shooting and trying to figure out how you can create something different and unique. These 35mm to 120 adapters will help you to do that, and you can tuck them into any medium format camera that you've got at home.
Does it match up to Hasselblad Xpan? I think it's a work in progress. If I can nail the centre part of the frame, get rid of that halation that exists there, then I think, yes. It's a really cheap landscape alternative, but at the same time, I think having that halation, there actually creates a very different dynamic to it, which is a lot of fun.
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