Friday 20 April 2012

The Brick

This my friends, is my beloved brick. She is of course, a Bronica SQ-a, which was introduced by Bronica in 1982.


In typical 80's fashion, it would appear that it was designed entirely with a ruler. The camera's weight, size, and angular frame do often lead me to believe that I'm actually carrying around a house brick. That being said, it is the most functional house brick I've ever had the pleasure of shooting with, and I simply adore this camera.



It's battered, tattered, slightly rough around the edges, and has obviously been well used, but it works pretty well considering! The lens is clean, the viewfinder clear, and all the functions still work as they should. Testament I think to the original build quality. It has a feel of being pretty over-engineered, with everything having a nice solid feel to it.

The downside of all this build quality and weight is that I tend not to carry it around with me on a normal day out shooting. It stays nicely locked away until I have something planned for it. Generally this will be a modelling shoot where the conditions are fairly consistent and I don't have to worry about giving myself an aching back lugging it around. Still... It's not the cameras fault that I'm lazy right?



The lens of this camera is beautiful. It's probably 30 years old but the focusing action is still as smooth as silk, and is perfectly weighted. Coupled with the great depth of field afforded by medium format shooting, it's not too difficult to produce some really striking images. I'm always happy with most of the pictures I shoot with this camera.

I guess there's something about shooting medium format that makes me slow down, think a bit more, and hold my fire until everything's right. Something I should be doing anyway? Yeah probably, and to some extent I already do, but there's nothing quite like 12 shots on a roll and high developing costs to really slow you down!


Maybe you're gathering this as we go along here, but the weak link in my Bronica chain is definitely my medium format scanner. I'm pretty certain it's probably the oldest scanner in the world, but... It's all I've got. I think this scanner is JUST about better than no scanner at all, but I'll leave you with a few more 'life' shots to decide for yourselves. Until next time!


1 comment:

  1. Yes, some excellent portraits. Ive always found the WLF of my TLR a bit confusing as its reversed!

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