I got myself a twin lens reflect camera, the Minolta Autocord CdS, to start shooting square photos. I’ve been curious about square format since I learned about the famous Hasselblad V series and the amazing experience of shooting from the waist level. Shooting from the waist level is truly enjoyable. The feeling of seeing the photos from the ground glass is so satisfied.
One note I may add to using the waist level finder is don’t stuff your eye into the magnifier glass for “fine focus” (as you see so many Youtube photographers do), but rather put the camera down at your waist level and flip out the magnifier glass, at this distance, the circle “focusing spot” (in the middle of your ground glass) will fill up the entire magnifier glass, makes it super easy and fast to fine focus. Then, you can flip down the magnifier glass and re-compose, this way is much faster than you stuff your eye in the magnifier glass and bend your back up and down for the shots. Thanks to Rick Olesen for this focus tip.
Rick Oleson is a man who sale focusing screens for waist level camera and he’s been using waist level for about 30 years now. His tip is super helpful to me since I was stuff my eye to the magnifier glass as I saw others did.
Next is some shots from my newest camera, the Rolleiflex SL66E, my dream camera and the most expensive one I have. So far I really enjoy using the camera. I’m planning to test out the tilt feature soon.
The last photo is my favorite from the roll. I like how similar the 2 trunks divide into 2 branches and their “gesture” creates a nice composition. The thing I wish I could do better is make sure the trunk behind is in focus entirely, I should shoot at f/5.6 or something like that to achieve that desire depth of field. But it’s hard to know exactly how much depth of field in these cases. Hope I will learn more about controlling depth of field for the next time.
Thank you for reading to the end. More photos next time!
film sequence 