Mikhail Shabalin

About di­git­al

My ac­quaint­ance with di­git­al cam­eras happened quite early. I had a chance to work with Sony Di­git­al Mavica FD-81, which re­cor­ded pho­tos on a floppy disk. After it there were a bunch of dif­fer­ent di­git­al com­pacts. But some­how, they all flew by. Auto­mat­ic mode and here is res­ult. Un­til the Can­on EOS 300D ap­peared. Just for a second, the first di­git­al SLR cam­era with in­ter­change­able op­tics and a set of pro­fes­sion­al ad­just­ments and shoot­ing modes at the price of an am­a­teur cam­era. Can­on in­ven­ted a new class of pho­to­graph­ers. Ad­vanced am­a­teurs. And this cam­era ended up in my hands. For quite a long time I tried to shoot some­how, just press­ing the but­ton. Dur­ing this time, Can­on had already re­leased the 10D, 20D, 30D and even, I think, the first 5D. But I was lucky. I de­cided to re­learn how to take pic­tures at the mo­ment when the 40D came onto the mar­ket. I still think that it is an ab­so­lutely amaz­ing cam­era for its time. I don’t know what the en­gin­eers did there, but the im­age from this sensor gave a head start to its suc­cessors 50D and 60D. And it even “made noise” like a film one. How­ever, the time has come to say good bye and switch to a full frame. First 5D mark II, then 5D mark III. Both are amaz­ing work­ing ma­chines. It is simply im­poss­ible to say anyth­ing neg­at­ive about any of my five D cam­eras. Simple, un­der­stand­able, giv­ing the ex­pec­ted res­ult. Work­horses of their time. Un­til it was time to part with them. At the time of buy­ing the Sony A7MIII, there were simply no al­tern­at­ives on the mar­ket. This cam­era sur­passed all the play­ers in its tech­n­ic­al cap­ab­il­it­ies. It can do pho­tos. And video. And Wi-Fi. And Bluetooth. Bought it. Played with it. Ter­rible va­cuum clean­er. I mean dust around sticks to sensor. Small. All is too ex­pens­ive. A bunch of un­ne­ces­sary set­t­ings. Half of the menu is for some un­known reas­on. And the main draw­back. Mir­ror­less. For some, an un­doub­ted plus. For me, this is an­oth­er mar­ket­ing ploy and an at­tempt by man­u­fac­tur­ers to make money for the second time. It pisses me off when auto­fo­cus starts to make mis­takes after 2-3 hours of op­era­tion due to heat­ing. I'm really look­ing for­ward to the re­turn of ortho­dox SLR cam­eras in small series and in large num­bers.

About 35mm

Some­how it didn't work out here. When I got my hands on the EOS 3, I had already man­aged to play around with all sorts of Zen­it’s-FED’s-Kiev’s and etc. And I had time to play around with them. And the film was already bit­ing in price by that time. So, I couldn't fully ap­pre­ci­ate all the charms of this cam­era. 7 frames per second. Ser­i­ously? A roll of film in 5.5 seconds! Why do I need eye-con­trol? If every frame is thought out, cal­cu­lated and ex­pec­ted? Beau­ti­ful? Yes! But there is no be­ne­fit. And it's a com­pletely dif­fer­ent st­ory when you get your hands on the Ho­ri­zont. A unique pan­oram­ic cam­era with a ro­tat­ing lens. Yes, there are sim­il­ar ones. Wide­lux is the same. But it is more ex­pens­ive and more ca­pri­cious. It's all pure mech­an­ics. This is the only small format cam­era that I truly love and use all the time.

About MF

The first me­di­um format cam­era I had was the Ky­iv 6C. This is, if you like, the fore­fath­er of the Ky­iv 60. Which was still de­signed for a thick me­di­um format film rac­cord and re­quired in­ter­frame in­ter­v­al ad­just­ment for modern films. The Ky­iv 60 seemed like a pi­ti­ful boy com­pared to this cam­era. And al­though the cam­eras differed visu­ally only in the po­s­i­tion of the shut­ter re­lease but­ton, the sen­sa­tions were rad­ic­ally dif­fer­ent. Yes. Then there was an­oth­er 6C and three 60s. The square frame drove me crazy. And it was ex­tremely dif­fi­cult and pain­ful to re­learn. Any­one who has tried it - will un­der­stand. And the op­tics! I still re­mem­ber the draw­ing of the Volna-3 with warmth. What He­lios 40 is there? Plus a set of Carl Zeiss Jena lenses. Where Bio­met­er 80 could sim­ul­tan­eously hide pimples and draw each eyelash at the same time. Ky­iv 60 is ba­sic­ally good. But ar­cha­ic. And I de­cided to get some­thing more modern. Mam­iya 645 ProTL. Mod­u­lar mag­ni­fi­cence. If you want it - with a shaft and noth­ing else, and here's a bul­let­proof cube. If you want it - a TTL meter­ing prism, a mo­tor, and here's an auto­mat­ic SLR. All with con­tacts, smart. Can do everything. Mir­ror lock up – here we go. TTL flash – not a prob­lem. Mul­tiple ex­pos­ure - as easy as pie. And quite com­pact. Everything is great. But 6x4.5. Not a square. And not even close. And then there's the hangover from Ky­iv that hasn't gone away. I tried, but even­tu­ally gave in and changed the sys­tem to RZ 67II. Everything here seems to be the same, only the cam­era is big­ger and the format is lar­ger. And closer to a square. And everything seems to be fine. But it's scary to take it out in­to the fresh air. Too many con­tacts for everything. And as a con­sequence of all this, Pentax 67. It's not scary to take for a walk. Iron. Al­most like Ky­iv. No ex­tra con­tacts. Well, God bless them. And everything is great un­til one day, then my stu­dent present me Mam­iya RB 67 ProSD. It's like Mam­iya RZ, but only pure mech­an­ics. Now I'm strug­gling with the choice of which one to take for a walk, Pentax or Mam­iya.

About LF

And there's noth­ing to talk about the large format. Of the full-plate cam­eras with a format of 8 by 10 inches, my Or­bit C1, aka Calu­met C1, turned out to be the most op­tim­al. It has all the front and rear stand­ard shifts. The bel­lows are in­tact. The rest is up to the op­tics. The old brass Pet­zv­al was dif­fi­cult to get be­fore. And now it's even more hard to do. But we some­how mastered am­bro­type with the old man, and we don't need more.