Medium Format Film - Coffee in Nashville

Starting your day chatting with a friend, over a good coffee, is hard to beat. Nearly impossible when your only goal for the day is to meander around and look for beautiful things and soak in the quirks of East Nashville.

The Bronica S2A, a hefty 6x6 focal plane medium format SLR produced in Tokyo from 1969-1977, it is the last fully mechanical 6x6 SLR among Bronica’s series. It’s unique feature is the 'instant return automatic mirror' that swings down during exposure, allowing space for wide-angle and deep-seated lenses.

Clocking in at nearly 5lbs, Subtlety is not the aim here. The Bronica S2A exudes a tank-like presence, bordering on the absurd. Crafted from steel and chrome, its construction is as robust as it gets. Triggering the shutter feels like slamming an old truck door shut. This chunky shutter is an irreplicable shooting experience.

The sharpness of this lens, the 7.5cm Nikkor speaks for itself, with bokeh still rendering beautifully at f/5.6. The tight focal plane, prototypical of these Hassablad style bodies, shows the area of acceptable focus so clear you can see it from her toes to her mid-face, with a subtle softness creeping up on the back of her arm.

For this session we shot through a full roll of Porta 160 and a half a roll of Kodak Gold 200, left over from another session. I love shooting both, but the beautiful punchy tones of Kodak Gold in the portrait above has made me revaluate potential use cases for my kit in the future.

Coffee is meant to be drank, Film to be shot, and things experienced. Best, in my opinion, by analog, on film, to be timelessly remembered.