As I mentioned in my first post, I've recently purchased a Mamiya M645, which is replacing a Canon 35mm SLR. The Canon was a fantastic camera, but having used both of them this last weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed shooting with the M645 the most. I originally bought the Canon camera because it offered me more functionality than my first SLR, which was fully manual.
Somehow, though, the bells and whistles of the Canon didn't really end up being that useful. Sure, it had a bunch of different shooting modes, allowing me to control everything myself, or to let the camera have some or all of the control. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I found that I'd got into the habit of selecting the auto mode most of the time, which didn't always give me the results I was looking for. I also felt that I'd stopped thinking about what I was doing, and ended up using the thing like an expensive point and shoot camera.
The M645 is a different kettle of fish entirely, it's all manual, and doesn't even have a built in light meter. In order to use the camera effectively, I'm going to have to be thinking about what I want to achieve with each shot. Which is not a bad thing really, as I find it's far too easy to stop thinking about such things if you have the option of not having to. I'm expecting to have quite a few dud shots to start with (particularly as I'll also be shooting with colour transparency film for the first time), but I'm also expecting my photography to improve, as I start forcing myself to think about what I'm doing.
So, all in all, was the Canon a bad camera? I don't think so, it certainly did the job well, but it didn't really suit what I was trying to do with it. The 645 should fit the bill rather nicely, and I'm looking forward to seeing the results of the first film I put throught it.
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