For the recent road trip that to Vermont, North Coast Maine and Canada I left my Nikon’s and Fuji’s at home. This time without too much hesitation I grabbed handful of 120mm Kodak Portra 400 and decided to use my medium format Yashica Mat 124G for medium format travel photography. After extensively using DSLR for work this idea seemed like a good one.
It was time to step back, load the film, look through beautiful glass viewfinder, manually focus, hold your breath for a second and press the shutter button. Wind the film. Repeat it all 12 times. Load new roll of 120mm film.
I lately have been enjoying shooting film more and more. What’s cool about film? Lot’s of things. I like that hesitation to take an image (is it worth, is it not? you don’t want to waste that precious film, do you?), I like the simplicity of film camera (shutter, aperture, manual focus), I like the look of film. Film makes me think differently. With the film I take my time. I concentrate more. I’ve heard someone before saying they love film because it has soul. I certainly think there is a lot of truth in those words.
Yashica Mat 124G is probably least expensive medium format camera’s on the market. Used camera that was built from 1970 till 1986 costs somewhere in the range of $100 to $300 (depending on its condition and whether in camera light meter works). I like its 6×6 format. I like the way it feels and looks. And that’s why Yashica Mat 124G was in my bag when we hit the road for East Coast in July 2014.
While exploring East Coast my wife and I were looking for some solitude so we started our journey at Acadia National Park and headed up North staying close to the coastal line as much as possible. We eventually ended up in small fishermen town Lubec, Maine, which with its just right population of approximately 1,1300 people is the easternmost town in the contiguous United States.
16 feet Atlantic Ocean tidal cycles every 6 hours 15 minutes, breezy and refreshing days, mysterious and cold nights usually accompanied by thick fog), friendly locals, Canada and its Campobello Island and Roosevelt Campobello International Park right across the bridge… It all was just what we were looking for our little summer getaway.
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