The first shot on the Mamiya 645

During a trip to Tokyo, Japan earlier this year I had a goal. I wanted to pick up my first medium format film camera. The M645 was on the top of my list. After two week in the city and looking through many vintage camera stores, I was beginning to think that I might not find one. There were plenty of Mamiyas around, just not many serviced 645’s that caught my eye. However, on one of our last days in the city me and my partner were in Shinjuku, the rain started pouring down and we were looking for somewhere to hide. Our hiding spot just happened to be a vintage camera store we hadn’t looked at yet.

Kitamura Kamera is a multi storied vintage camera store with an amazing amount of cameras, lenses and film types. One of the floors was all serviced and tested camera gear with warranties and that is where I decided to pick up a Mamiya 645 with a 55mm lens, equivalent to a 35mm lens on a full frame camera. The image you see in this post, nothing special really, except from the fact that it is the first frame I captured with this camera. The subject is of another vintage camera store in the Akihabara area of Tokyo, where I happened to buy the Kodak Portra 160 film that this shot was taken on. So even though there not might be anything special about this shot technically or creatively, it is special to me.

It also amuses me that the first post on this blog is about a 120mm photograph, on a website called 35mm Obsession.