However at the same time– scanning can be a pain in the ass. Shot on a Hasselblad 501 with Kodak Portra 400 film. It is hard to tell what the colors of a photo look like (just by looking at a color negative), and after a month or two without seeing any of my medium-format film, I was so excited to finally see my images. On one hand, I love the sense of surprise and thrill I get when I finally see my images on the screen. Shot on a Hasselblad 501c with Kodak Portra 400.įirst of all, I have mixed feelings about scanning. I got the film developed at a local lab in Berkeley ( Photolab) and because scanning was expensive, I decided to do it myself. After my trip to Stockholm, London, and Dubai I had around 25–30 rolls of Kodak Portra 400 120 film to get scanned. So recently I dusted off my Epson v750 scanner at home, and started to scan some of my negatives (on the Epson scanning software). Shot on a Hasselblad 501 with Kodak Portra 400. The cons of shooting medium-format Berkeley, 2014. I notice while the photos on my Hasselblad tend to be of urban-landscapes and stuff that isn’t moving, the shots on the Mamiya 7 are much more energetic, fluid, and include a lot more “action”. So for about a week, I shot about 10 rolls through the Mamiya 7 ( Kodak Portra 400) and I have actually been quite pleased with the shots. I loved the way it felt in my hand, how easy it was to use (like my Leica), and the weight and handling (not that heavy and quite portable). To be honest, I fell in love with the Mamiya 7. The Mamiya 7 seemed like a fun camera to play around with– it provided the ease-of-use (rangefinder) with the quality of medium-format. The Mamiya 7 is like a Leica on steroids. I was starting to get a bit annoyed with the Hasselblad (as it is quite big and heavy, and clunky to use). When I was in Dubai, my friend Imraan Dudhia let me shoot with a Mamiya 7 (owned by our friend Mohamed Somji). I think shooting medium-format has helped me slow down, be a lot more conscious of each shot, and also made me appreciate the act of image-making. Because you have only a few shots a roll (10–12 shots) – you make every image count. I also love the zen-ness when it comes to shooting on a Hasselblad (or any other medium-format camera). The world looks so much more interesting through it (hard to explain) but it looks more 3-D like. Also there is something sensual about looking through the ground-glass of a Hasselblad. Furthermore, you see the world flipped left-right. So when you move your camera to the left, it appears to be moving to the right (and vice versa). What is also fascinating about shooting on the Hasselblad is that everything is inverted. We’re always so used to seeing reality head-on (or through a viewfinder), and rarely while looking down (using a waist-finder on a Hasselblad or TLR). First of all, you see the world in a unique way. Shooting on a Hasselblad if an amazing experience (or any TLR camera). The experience of shooting on a Hasselblad Dutifully while living in Berkeley, I carried around my (quite heavy) Hasselblad while on my daily chores and just exploring the neighborhood. Then I realized I had a Hasselblad that my friend Jeroen Helmink gave me about 2 years ago (which was collecting dust on my shelf) that I wanted to try out. So I first started shooting a lot of squares on my smartphone (squares in-camera, post-processing in VSCO, and uploading to Instagram and social media). To be honest, my first real fascination with shooting squares was from Instagram (and of course photographers like Lee Friedlander and Vivian Maier). To start off, I have been really fascinated with shooting square-format photographs recently. So after a long trip in Stockholm, Dubai, and London I wanted to share some of my experiences shooting medium-format (Hasselblad 501c + 80mm lens and Mamiya 7 + 80mm lens) for street photography (and traveling in general).