As a young man in the early 90s I shot mainly with a Nikon F801s and a Seagull 6×6. Always wanting a “proper” medium format camera the nearest I got was picking up a brochure for a Fuji GW670III (probably from the long gone City Camera Exchange in Western Rd, Brighton).
Fast forward 25 years and amongst old magazines in my loft I found that old GW670 brochure – which led me back to film, a Lubitel, an Ensign Selfix 16-20, and finally, I’ve scratched that medium format Fuji itch last month, when I bought a battered old eBay GW690 from Japan.
This coincided with a holiday to Wales (staying at the highly recommended tybeic.com), so I crammed some Cinestill 50D, Provia 100F & Portra 160 in my new film case (again, highly recommended from zaidmade) and set off. I’d cycled over the beautiful Hirnant Pass previously, and thought it would be an ideal testing ground for my GW690 and some Cinestill 50D, intrigued how its motion picture film stock emulsion would render all that green.
With tripod, hotshoe spirit level, iPhone light meter and a miniature dachshund for distraction (don’t even ask), I wasn’t quite sure what would emerge.
An initial exposure with the lens cap in place (rangefinder newbie error!) meant only 7 6x9cm negatives left on the 120 roll (bought from Zoing Image and processed and scanned by Colourstream in Brighton). Here are my 5 favourites – the GW690 and Cinestill are both here to stay.
The Hirnant Pass, Berwyn Mountains, Wales.
Copyright: Irv Bartlett 2018
The Hirnant Pass, Berwyn Mountains, Wales.
Copyright: Irv Bartlett 2018
The Hirnant River, Berwyn Mountains, Wales.
Copyright: Irv Bartlett 2018
The Hirnant River, Berwyn Mountains, Wales.
Copyright: Irv Bartlett 2018
The Hirnant River, Hirnant Valley, Berwyn Mountains, Wales.
Copyright: Irv Bartlett 2018
Web: www.irvbartlett.com
Twitter: @irvbphoto
Instagram: @irvb & @beautiful_brutalism
10 Comments
Reinhold
August 31, 2018 at 5:17 pmMy favorite is no. 3, the one with the fence. Beautiful.
Flavio Colker
April 11, 2019 at 6:54 pmDEfinitely.
John
August 31, 2018 at 8:17 pmIrv – These are terrific. I guess the Cine film is responsible for the interesting palette?
Best
John
Irv
September 1, 2018 at 8:09 amHi John, yes, I’ve shot 50D before at the beach and there was a cyan/ blue cast so was interested to see how it treated green. The 2nd image in the article with the back of the gw690 was taken with my Fuji X-T20, so you can see more true to life colours.
Stu
September 1, 2018 at 12:26 amBeautiful
carlos albisu
September 1, 2018 at 7:08 amI am not a fan of landscape photography, but the combination of cinestill and fujica really works. Specially liking the composition on the first one, beautiful.
Matt Williams
September 8, 2018 at 3:43 amLove the results of Cinestill + landscape photos.
Question though: are these cropped photos? All of them appear to be 4:3 aspect ratio, aside from the second which appears to be 16:9. So the 4:3 photos are much narrower than they should be and the 16:9 is much wider. Is there a reason for this? I’m just curious, because I found it strange that all five example photos from a 6×9 medium format camera were cropped in some way.
irvb
September 8, 2018 at 7:16 amGood question! Yes they are cropped slightly as the lab I use only has a 6×7 mask for their scanner, so there’s a little more Cinestill goodness on the negs.
Irv
Dean Dent
October 7, 2018 at 7:01 pmWow, these are really beautiful. 6×9 just has a ‘bigness’ about it
Adam Laws
October 7, 2018 at 10:19 pmThese images have induced a crazy ammount of GAS. Beautiful work – very inspiring.