Not my 30D but a camera owned by Ryan Shippelt who is officially mad. He completely disassembled his 30D and then took pictures of the Frankenstein insides for the benefit of the Canon 30D group (that I moderate). Ryan is probably someone you don't want to lend your car too otherwise he might get curious and tear it down to its chassis to see how it all works. Anyway, I think it looks very pretty inside, sort of like one of those human plastinated bodies displayed at Bodyworlds. Instead of veins and muscles, we get steel, gold and wires.

This is one thing you can't do with digital. That is, shoot 16 frames, then go to unload the film and spill the whole thing into your lap. There it went, a whole roll of Astia, exposed in daylight. I had just went to seal it after taking it out of the 120 back and fumbled it and it came loose.

Maybe I could have saved it but I just went ARRGGHHHH and dumped it all on the floor. The closest thing I came to in digital is when I reflexively went to DELETE ALL in my 30D menu thinking I had protected the frames I had wanted to keep. Nope.

I guess that's worse. Though there are programs out there to extract even deleted frames.

The shot above is an example of the not-so-fun Polaroids that the Mamiya 645 will produce with the Polaroid back (645 Polaroid 916). I had read that the 645 would only produce an image that was 1/4 the size of the Polaroid and for some reason, I still purchased the back. This is may also be an example of my right brain overriding my left brain. "Cool medium format Polaroids!" vs "Dude, you are still getting 1/4 the size of that dedicated Polaroid you got just last week."

Don't tell my girlfriend but I brought home a new camera. It's one of the best classic folder cameras ever made, a Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta 533/16. But that's not why I'm posting. It's because when I got it and was poking around the body I found someone's film still in it. From the look of the roll -- it was Kodak Royal Xpan which wasn't made after the 70s -- it could have been taken decades ago. Although there's a chance I might have exposed the whole roll (I just popped it open and it was on exposure 8 of 12), I'm hoping that it's still good.

I spotted a listing on the local Craigslist that I couldn't pass up. It was for a new or nearly new Polaroid ProPack. This is one of those purchases that I didn't really care to overanalyze because at the heart of my attraction was -- this thing looks cool. It's a folder camera (yes, the folder action gets me again) and it takes instants. I did a bit of research prior and had discovered it also uses the peel-apart film that Fuji still produces so it isn't one of those Polaroids that is under the impending doom of no more film.

Since receiving the Mamiya 645 Pro-TL from KEH on Thursday I've pretty much been handling this system non-stop. On Friday there was a Vandigicam photowalk and I took it out yesterday while running on errands. So far, I've wrecked one, maybe two rolls of film, nearly dropped it once and have taken it apart twice to see how things work. I really like it.

The M645 with back and AE prism is about a third heavier than my 30D without its battery grip and probably would still be slightly heavier than the 30D with its grip. Obviously, it is quite a bit bulkier but not so much that it would be a problem in my Pac Designs courier bag.