I have an old YASHIKA Mat-124G, a top viewing twinlens medium format box camera that is in mint condition. Bought it for just$150 from an old tired studio photographer going into retirement and I have been shooting with it on a few occations. Just that I found out that, even if it is a really cool looking piece of equipment and it can teach you one or two things of "real" (I said that!) photography, it will just not fit my shooting style. I need something faster, more practical and easier to move around with. Usually I don't have the time to set things up on a tripod and then figure out what is up and what is down. So by chance I got this almost new digital Canon thing from a friend who tought it was broken. I took it to the Canon Service here in Tokyo and after 40 minutes the guys there had fixed the problem (for free!) and I was on my way.
Handy little thing and takes decent images. But here we go again, it just doesn't fit my shooting style. Too small to hold and I just hate to have to look at a LCD screen at an arms length to shoot stuff. These small digital wonders have opened up a new world of easy acces to photography for some, but also closed down the craft of photography and workstyle for some, well, that would be me then. There are certain things in life I think looks really stupid, one of them is a person shooting with a compact digital camera, staring on that screen like the world around him doesn't exists (another would be a person smoking a cigarette or playing with his/her mobile phone....hilarious, to be addicted to an electronic gadget or/and a plant!!!). I am going to continue to use my little compact camera, on jobs where I can not bring my SLR gear (guess that if I ever go to North Korea or... a titty bar that it would be useful, will probably never happen though..) since it works on some stuff in some situations.
So what is the solution for this luxurious predicament? Of course, the 35mm is still the king when on the road, never had any problems with it exept weight and street value (bag slashers wet dream that nice gear you have around your neck). But what's on my mind is a medium format rangefinder. Either a 6x4,5 or a 6x7. The Fuji GA 645 or the Fuji GW 670 II might be the way to go for me. Back to film, back to the future. I borrowed a GA 645 from a friend on a recent trip to the States and shot landscape and road travel with it and even if it is near to fully automatic the images turned out just great. Kind of fun to shoot with and compact enough to carry around where ever you might go (North Korea, titty bar...same shit to me). So maybe later today it's trading day here in Tokyo for m.w.c.p. Bye bye YASHIKA, hello FUJI.
People, give me a comment on this topic, am I the only one having to wrestle with my own work style from time to time?
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