Seeing squares

A humble 1960s Mamiya C3 trained David Clapp to see squares which became the start of his medium format journey

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My love affair with Mamiya began in the most unusual of ways. It came out as the antidote to the terrible time I was having after my return to film in 2015. I had made the rather crazy decision to buy a large format camera, and the experience was not going well. I met up with a local film photographer, Andrew Nadolski, and vented my frustrations over a coffee. He told me to sack off my large-format dream for a while, get a medium format and 'just go and have some fun'. So, one afternoon in Camera Centre in Cardiff whilst running an experience day for Canon UK, I saw holy light coming from a glass cabinet that pulled me in like a tractor beam.

First purchase

My first purchase was a mint Mamiya C3 for £150 that came with a 65mm lens. Introduced in 1962 and produced until 1965, Google informed me it was a groundbreaking medium-format twin-lens reflex (or TLR) camera that bridged professional and amateur markets with a unique versatility by offering a TLR first – interchangeable lenses. This was a rare feature at the time and Mamiya began offering a range of lenses from 65mm to 250mm. It was arguably rather heavy and bulky but offered so much more versatility than its fixed-focal-length Rolleiflex competition. This appealed to me.