Medium Format

Actually this is an interesting experience. I'm going through my old 6X6 cm. images, shot either with my Zeiss Ikonta or my later Yashicamat 124G (twin lens reflex). Scanning seems to be working quite well - 3200 pixels per inch on my EPson 4870 produces quite nice results and seems to be handling the dynamic range of my negatives fairly well. I had problems with Silverfast - crashing Photoshop on about every second scan, and even the Epson driver sometimes scans results in a blank image and I have to scan again. Tried updating my SIlverfast to the latest version (hoping that would fix the bug) but there was a bug in the visa accepting software so couldn't do that. Tried installing the demo but that didn't work either - they sure don't make it easy.
Anyway, ignoring the occasional blank scan, the epson driver seems to do a reasonable job. Of course I have to spend half an hour removing dust from the resultant scan but that's easy - just tedious and arguably no worse than time spent making backups of digital files. I have been using the 'minimize grain' 'unsharp mask' settings which work nicely. I'd like to try the multiscan feature of the latest silverfast but that will have to wait for another day.

I have a number of images I like from the Yashicamat - the twin lens part was never much of an issue (you can always raise the centre column of your tripod to get exactly the original view). Lack of depth of field in images which are near-far compositions is an issue. There's a lot to be said though for a simple camera with only one focal length lens to choose and making the best of it. Productivity actually goes up and it's amazing how if you only have a normal lens, you can find a lot of compositions which work with it.

I think that were I working strictly in black and white, it might be tempting to go back to 6X6 medium format. I love the square format.