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I just bought a Mamiya 645 (they call Mamiya the 'poor man's Hasselblad'). Spend about $800 on gear, looking forward to trying it out. The developing and scanni

I just bought a Mamiya 645 (they call Mamiya the 'poor man's Hasselblad'). Spend about $800 on gear, looking forward to trying it out. The developing and scanning here is expensive but it's a fun hobby and I'm looking forward to a more considered, tactile kind of shooting. They're certainly not 'useless' - this camera with good film should resolve a similar amount of detail as my Nikon D810 with a good lens. Obviously given the inflexibility you wouldn't use it for, say, photojournalism or most types of commercial photography, but medium format film is still used a lot in art photography and portraits.

supernova87a 7y ago
Of course I exaggerated a bit to say they're useless. But it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that they're seldom used. Unless you're really consciously going on a photo-taking trip, you're generally not carrying around these huge old mechanical cameras, getting the film developed, etc. Every step of the process is more involved and time consuming -- where are you getting the negatives/slides printed afterwards? Unless you're a high skills photographer, it just doesn't match people's use cases these days. Also, I've seen friends take up medium format as a fad, but they generally lose interest after a year at most. That said, I borrowed an old Bronica several years ago, and I enjoyed it a lot. There something so satisfying about loading that film up, winding, exposing, and getting your hands wet on the chemicals, and having a big negative to look at, with sharpness outdoing anything you see even today in digital.