John Kung

While it would be difficult to find a working photographer these days that don’t shoot digital, it would also be hard to find a working photographer that will tell you that they completely hate film. It often doesn’t make sense to work in film any more now that digital has started to come of age, but there is something reassuring about recording an image on celluloid, if for no other reason than that it won’t disappear because of a freak hard drive crash.

One of my favourite cameras is my Mamiya 645 Super that I bought while I was living in Japan. The 645 was manufactured from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, and was one of number of medium format SLR cameras out on the market. Mine was a low end model, came without the power grip or the AE prism, but the model does have removable film backs (a moot point for me since I only have the one film back) and mine came with a 70mm f2.8, which is a touch wider than the standard 80mm lens of the format. Of course it is totally manual so with it comes the light meter (or if I’m feeling macho an EV table).

Anyway lately I’ve been shooting more film in my spare time, I love look of it, the texture, the way it slides from light to dark, how the whites look like cream and the blacks look like ink. It just looks so… right.