Medium format film vs digital portrait shoot

After dreaming about it for a long time, I finally splashed out on a medium format camera – Mamiya RZ67. And since I’m so new to it and had no idea how to use this beast of a camera, I asked my good friend Silvija to hang out with me in a park and take some pictures. I thought it would be an interesting idea to do a post comparing the medium format film vs digital shots on this portrait shoot.

medium format

I shot two rolls of Portra 160 120 film on the Mamiya RZ67 and many of them were hit and miss as I really didn’t know yet what I was doing. First of all we chose a really bad time during a sunny midday, so most of the shots that didn’t turn out well were because of all of the shadows. I always shoot on digital + film, and this time especially it made sense as I was basically using my digital Canon camera as the light meter. I would do the settings I was planning to do for Mamiya on my digital camera to confirm it looks fine, and then shoot in on the Mamiya. This is why I have so many nearly identical shots on both to be able to compare in this post.

Main thing I need to work on is definitely the focusing on Mamiya. I took ages to focus and it felt very tricky – my eyes were just watering horribly in the sun too. So many of them didn’t come out as sharp as I was hoping for. I also didn’t even know if these would come out at all as it was my first time ever shooting on medium format, so I had it developed super small. (In fact they look a lot less sharp here on they blog than they are, as they are TOO small for my blog’s dimensions.. ;D Won’t do that again now that I know the shots do come out.) I’ve had great results on the Mamiya since this shoot, I’m actually a bit obsessed with the look.

digital shots

And below see the digital shots from the same shoot. Shot on Canon 5D Mark IV. Do just want to say with the digital images, I didn’t try to make the tones look like film or match the mamiya results at all. I just did my usual digital tones (which I like very warm.) It’s very clear how much more comfortable with digital I am! But have been shooting so much more film lately, so hopefully it will just keep getting better, as I do love it.

Do let me know what you think in the comments below and which look you prefer – medium format film vs digital? My other film posts on the blog can be found here.