Advice needed for 1st Medium Format

[Excalibur2]

***Unless you have a home darkroom and/or a pro lab with good survival prospects, MF might not work for you. Sad but part of the new reality for us APUG inmates. ***

Good thinking, get the message onto ebay and I can get some gear cheap as prices tumble.

[Ric Trexell]

You said...

The Boss keeps me on a tight budget. Any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
David

David, you've got to win over that Boss. Then think about MF. First, take the boss to the jewelery store, Second, take the boss to the best eating joint in town. Third, flowers, flowers and more flowers. Forth, no bowling with the guys for a few weeks. You have got to stay home with the Boss. See why we say MF is expensive? Ric.

[CGW]

***Unless you have a home darkroom and/or a pro lab with good survival prospects, MF might not work for you. Sad but part of the new reality for us APUG inmates. ***

Good thinking, get the message onto ebay and I can get some gear cheap as prices tumble.

The OP and I both live in S. Ontario, mate. The situation here for film isn't exactly rosy, lab-wise. It's a valid concern.

[Sirius Glass]

Welcome to APUG. Stick around and you may find a less expensive MF camera.

Steve

[jp498]

Unlike what some have alluded to, an old Yashica TLR can be a very reliable simple camera. It's also cheap after purchase because I'm not tempted to buy all sorts of system accessories and lenses like you might with an interchangable lens camera. If it needs work, you send it off to get fixed up once (deans or hama), and you'll probably be good for another 20 years. It's probably more reliable than the communist cameras, cheaper to repair than rolleiflexes. A TLR is not as full featured as a "system" like mamiya/bronica/hasselblad/pentax offers, but I'm doing MF now, and it's fun and easy and high quality. I have great respect for the "system" options, but my money is going towards other things right now.

[keithwms]

Any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
David

What's our budget? There's a super cool MF camera for almost any budget. But you have to decide what the budget is first.

[hpulley]

Thankfully I can still drop off 35mm, 120 and 220 C41, B&W and E6 right in town here at Ponds Fotosource. They don't sell much film anymore strangely but I can order decent film myself. They make much more money on the processing I guess. I need to get back into developing and printing my own which I did years ago but for now I'll have to stick to 120 and 220 for this reason until I get the darkroom set up. And the old enlarger is just for 35mm so I'd need to shoot chromes for now or get an enlarger and lens for bigger negatives.

Edit: I really like square format, that is what I started with. Something 6x6 would be good but I'm not really picky at this point.

The prices for the Bronica SQ are attractive, looks like the Pentax 645 isn't too bad either. I will watch Henrys though they don't seem to have much in MF. I've bought smaller format stuff from them in the past.

[Karls]

I just bought a Bronica ETRS from KEH. I just jumped at what seemed a good price. Now I need to learn. It cost me about $100 after trade in of a contax G1 & sonar lens (value $150) for lens, finder, speed grip, back & instruction manual. It shows a lot of use but works perfectly. It does not have a light meter in it.

I have no idea what I am doing but I figure there is only one way to learn.

[Necator]

The cheapest entry into medium format would be a folder, like the Agfa Isolettes. However, you will be without metering and coupled rangefinder, so it is truly manual. Skipping the Holgas, the next step up the ladder are the TLRs, as suggested by several posters. After that you will find yourself in MF SLR land, with a wide variety of choice. The cheapest in this category are probably the Bronica ETRS series. At KEH.com they start at around 300 USD for a kit with body, back, lens and either waist level viewfinder or prism. After I bought mine, I wrote a small post on the considerations I went through. You can see it here on apug

[mablo]

Well.. I've gone through the folder phase and now have in my possession a couple of old el-cheapo TLR cameras. All in all I think I've bought four old TLR's. All had shutter problems, one had hazy lenses and a rotten mirror and at least two had light leaks. I've burned a lot of money and frustration to get two working TLR cameras. If I'm honest, only one of them is really good.

So I think I'm qualified to the next MF level.