Fomapan 400 // Bronica Sq-ai

A couple weeks ago, I went to my friend and asked if he was still interested in selling his Bronica SQ-AI. This was a long time coming. I borrowed the camera in the summer of 2023 and had a blast using it. Now that I was in the market for a medium format camera of my own, I decided to pull the trigger on buying his. Along with the camera and two lenses (a 80mm and 50mm), he also threw in a set of filters. Included in this set were some Vivitar Close-Up filters (which surprisingly are fairly cheap—only about $10 at B&H).

I decided to mess around with these filters while shooting a test roll of Fomapan 400. Below are the results. Enjoy!

I’ll highlight a few of my favorites. I was pleasantly surprised with how these turned out. The SHALLOW depth of field can be a little too shallow at times but that lends itself to some cool experimental vibes. Like this one:

Pierre Up Close

I think the shallow DOF of this photo gives it a very unique effect. We’re looking at maybe half an inch or less of focus and the rest is a soupy blurriness. I wish i had kept track of which close-up filters i had used because this one might be a stack of all of them (+1, +2, +4).

Pierre Up Close (no. 2)

This one is a lot cleaner. A much deeper DOF. This most likely was with the +1.

Pierre

This, to my knowledge, wasn’t taken with a closeup filter. Just the good ol’ 80mm Zenzanon lens. I do love the difference in DOF when switching from 35mm to Medium Format.

Those are the highlights for this roll. Overall, I want to experiment with the closeup filters a bit more, especially with some portraits. Hopefully you’ll be seeing some of those soon.