Hot Mamiya summer

I bought a Mamiya 6 kit back in December 2024 for an incredible price but hadn't really given it the love it deserved. I always found some excuse to not bring it with me, but really they all boiled down to not having confidence in my 120 developing process. I was using the ars-imago lab box at the time, and the 120 module on that thing just doesn't work very well. Certain 120 films absolutely refuse to spool into the module (especially Kodak Gold!), there's a decent chance that you will light leak the first frame if you aren't careful, and then when transferring it from the module to the spiral, there's another chance it won't spool correctly and you will destroy the roll. This, plus getting an XPan around the same time, culminated in my Retvrn to Medium Format being a bit of a false start. 

After switching to the AGO and getting confident with loading 35mm in a paterson tank in a dark bag, I decided it was time to try 120 more seriously again. I also wanted to ditch Cinestill df96 as my black and white developer. In order to feed two birds with one scone I put a test roll of Lucky SHD400 120 through the mam6 while walking to ars-imago with Liam:

You can see from the lines in the last frame all of the struggles I had getting it on the reel in the dark bag (sorry Marc). Not exactly sure what happened. But hey otherwise everything looked good! 

Ring party

I then spent a bunch of time testing out my new black and white developer (ars-imago FD, which is exactly, or at least very related to, Bellini hydrofen) and not so much time shooting 120. Oops. 

But then we hosted a casual "ring party" at our place to celebrate finally getting our wedding bands. Lena was interested in playing with my cameras, so I showed her how to load the Mamiya 6, stuck on the 50 and a flash, and let her go to town.

Dani and I left the next day for New York, so I didn't around to developing the rolls for a bit. She shot a roll of Phoenix and a roll of Opticolor, both of which came out super great!

Shots around lake Zürich

The New York trip had been for work summit. One of the consequences was that I now had to design and ship a major project I had proposed in a relatively short amount of time. I broke up my long coding sessions in the research basement (where they keep the infra people) by walking around the lake nearby with the Mamiya 6 and shooting a roll or two.

Some expired Tri-X:

Some Lomo CN 400:

Some expired Portra 800. I took the 150mm and actually had a ton of fun:

Some mid shots on ektar:

Segnespass

I bullied Liam into hiking across and around the alluvial plane of Sengesböden up to Sengespass, and bullied myself into finally bringing the mam6 on a hike. I shot three rolls, but the first roll of lomo sunkissed didn't really look good (but I also shot it in the worst possible light). The roll of phoenix and the roll of ektar both came out amazing.

220 test roll

Some time passed. Somehow we coordinated 11 gays to do an overnight at a hutte, but that's for another post because I didn't bring the mamiya... 

By now I realized I really liked the Mamiya 6 and square format, but having more than 12 frames per roll would be nice. There are a few film respoolers that will sell you 220 rolls, where each roll is twice the length of 120. I got some Shanghai gp3 100 in 220 and shot a test roll, mostly to practice loading 220 (which didn't go great!). Our friend Pierre was crashing with us for the week as he was temporarily homeless due to German beuracracy. 

Hot Mamiya summer pt 2

Unfortunately, right around then a friend of mine was selling his Mamiya 7 due to lack of use. I'd been enjoying the 6 so much, surely I'd like it's newer sibling. He offered me a price I couldn't say no to, and I took it home... 

But this post is already long enough. Hot Mamiya summer pt. 2 coming soon.