I had a studio booked. I had Sherri Johnson booked as the model. I had Ishkhan Ghazarian, a talented Toronto-based portrait photographer, coming along to help with the lighting and second-camera duties. I had a Rolleiflex 6006 that I had been planning to feature, that I had been excited about, that was supposed to be the camera the whole video was built around.
The 6006 did not want to play. The film advance was making a sound that no camera should make and the winder was creeping forward by half-frames instead of advancing properly. When I did manage to fire the shutter it was clearly not working the way it should. I plugged the NiCad battery in to charge in the hope that the problem was electrical (Rolleiflex 6006s use a 6V rechargeable battery pack that is notorious for failing after thirty-odd years of being stored at various states of charge). But the camera was not going to be the star of this particular shoot.
I had brought the Bronica ETRS as a backup, mostly out of habit. I have done this enough times now to know that the camera that is meant to be the star sometimes is not the camera that ends up doing the work. The ETRS has been my backup for international shoots for years and has rescued more than one studio session. This was another one.
This is the writeup of the shoot that resulted. Two rolls put through the ETRS (one of FP4 Plus, one of Portra 400), Sherri being patient with my close-up wide-lens habits, Ish steering the lighting and the final setup and the 6006 squeezing out a couple of frames late in the day before finally giving up.
What the Bronica ETRS is
For anyone who has not come across the ETRS before, a quick orientation.
The Bronica ETRS is a 6x4.5 medium format SLR released by Zenza Bronica in October 1978, succeeding the original ETR (1976) and the non-modular ETRC (1977). It was the third camera in Bronica’s 645 line, with the ETRSi following in 1988 as the final iteration. The ETR series ran until Tamron (which had acquired Bronica) shut down camera production around 2005. So the ETRS sits in the middle of a long product life, with prices on the used market currently around £150 to £300 for a working body with a 75mm lens, depending on condition.
The format gives you fifteen frames per roll of 120 film, which is the practical compromise between the twelve frames of 6x6 and the eight or ten of larger formats. The frame is rectangular (56mm × 41.5mm) which suits portraiture and editorial work. The film back is interchangeable, which means you can swap between 120, 220 and even 35mm panoramic backs mid-roll using a dark slide.
The lens system is the part that matters most for studio work. All ETRS lenses contain a Seiko leaf shutter inside the lens itself, electronically controlled from the body. The shutter runs from 8 seconds to 1/500 of a second, with a mechanical 1/500 fallback if the battery dies. The big advantage of a leaf-shutter system over a focal-plane shutter is flash synchronisation at all shutter speeds. A focal-plane shutter typically only syncs at 1/60 or 1/125 of a second, which can be limiting in bright daylight when you want to use fill flash. A leaf shutter syncs at 1/500. For studio photographers this is the killer feature, and for wedding photographers (the ETRS’s original target audience) it was the reason to buy one.
The lens mount is the proprietary Bronica ETR mount. All lenses in the ETR system (from the original 1976 ETR through to the late ETRSi) are cross-compatible, which means you can mix early Zenzanon MC lenses with later Zenzanon PE lenses on any ETR-series body. I have a 75mm f/2.8 (the standard kit lens), a 50mm f/2.8 wide-angle and a 150mm f/3.5 short telephoto. The 75mm is roughly equivalent to a 47mm lens on a 35mm camera. The 50mm is roughly equivalent to a 31mm. Both are really useful.
Body and back are modular, with optional speed grips, AE prism finders and waist-level finders for different shooting styles. Mine has the AE-II prism finder fitted, which gives me a TTL meter with aperture priority and exposure compensation. For studio work with continuous light or with metered flash it is more than enough.
The ETRS is wonderfully compact for a medium format SLR. Considerably smaller than a Mamiya RB67 or Pentax 6x7. Comparable to a Mamiya 645 but lighter. It travels well, which is part of why I have one. Mine has been to Alaska, South Africa, Namibia and now Canada, and it has been dropped, frozen, sand-blasted and rained on. It has never let me down. There is a moment in the video where I mention having taken it to minus seventeen degrees Celsius in Alaska, where it worked when nothing else did. That is the kind of reliability I want from a camera that I am paying to drag across continents.
Why the Rolleiflex 6006 was not the camera today
A short paragraph on the 6006 because the camera deserves an explanation more than it deserves a defence.
The Rolleiflex 6006 is part of the 6000-series modular SLRs that Rollei released between 1979 (the original SLX) and 2002 (the last 6008). The 6006 specifically was released in 1984 and was the first of the series to use a proper rechargeable battery pack rather than the SLX’s troublesome internal cells. It is a super capable studio camera with through-the-lens metering and motor wind, plus a system of leaf-shutter Zeiss and Schneider lenses. When it works, it is a delight.
When it does not work, the failure modes are usually electrical. The NiCad battery packs that the 6006 uses have a finite lifespan and most of the ones on the second-hand market are decades past their sell-by date. Replacement packs exist (some made by DHW Fototechnik when they were still trading, others from third-party suppliers) but they are not cheap. You can also rebuild a 6006 pack with modern NiMH or LiFePO4 cells if you are handy with a soldering iron and a multimeter, which is a project I have been meaning to start for months.
Mine is doing the half-frame-advance thing that suggests the battery is not delivering enough current to drive the motor through a full cycle. The fix is going to be a battery rebuild. The shoot, however, was today. The Bronica had to step in.
The shoot
Sherri arrived ready to work. I had only met her a couple of days earlier (she had been recommended to me by another photographer who works in the Toronto studio scene) but she settled in quickly. The first half-hour of any portrait shoot is the conversation you need to have before either of you can produce anything that does not look posed, and Sherri made that easy.
The studio had some natural foliage on hand for set dressing, which I asked to be moved into shot for the opening frames. There is a tendency in studio portraits to lean too hard on the seamless paper backdrop, and I wanted to start with something that had a bit of texture and depth to it. We set Sherri on a stool with foliage behind and to one side of her, lit with continuous lights bounced into the ceiling for the soft top light and a smaller fill from one side. The ETRS loaded with FP4 Plus. Aperture-priority on the AE-II finder. I metered, recomposed, fired.
The first real frame was a half-length with Sherri looking at the camera. Three, two, one. The mirror flipped and the leaf shutter fired with the clean little tick it always makes, and the AE-II read out roughly 1/30 at f/5.6 (the roll has not been scanned yet so the exact numbers are still a guess). The next frame was closer in, with Sherri turning slightly away to give a half-profile. Then the same setup with a different expression.
We changed lenses to the 50mm wide-angle for the third sequence, which is where the philosophy section comes in.
On shooting wide and close
I have been criticised for this technique by other photographers, sometimes really directly! The orthodox view is that portraits should be shot with longer focal lengths (85mm to 135mm on a 35mm camera, or 150mm on 6x4.5) because the longer focal length compresses facial features and avoids the perspective distortion that comes from getting too close. The textbook says: never shoot a portrait with a wide lens.
I do not subscribe to the textbook on this.
There is a clear distinction between the kind of cartoonish distortion you get from shooting a face from six inches away with a fisheye (which is always bad) and what happens when you shoot a face from a reasonable working distance (two or three feet) with a moderate wide-angle lens (the 50mm on the ETRS is equivalent to about 31mm on 35mm). The first is a parody. The second is just a different lens choice that emphasises whatever is closest to the camera, usually the eyes.
The look you get from close-up wide-angle portraiture is intimate. There is more of the subject in the frame relative to the background. The eyes feel as if they are reaching towards you, and the face has presence rather than the flat planar quality you get from longer focal lengths. Martin Schoeller built a career on this. Annie Leibovitz uses it constantly, and plenty of editorial portraitists default to a 35mm or 28mm lens.
The technique is not for every face. Some bone structures handle it better than others. Sherri’s bone structure handles it brilliantly. I asked her to rest her chin on her hands and I got in close with the 50mm, framing tight enough that her eyes filled the upper third of the frame and her hands made an interesting line at the bottom. The result is not distorted. It is just a different kind of portrait.
When I asked Ish for his thoughts on the technique, he agreed that it can work, with the caveat that it suits some faces more than others. Which is what I would say myself. The technique is a tool. You pick it up when it fits the subject and you put it down when it does not.
Switching to Portra 400
The FP4 roll finished about twenty minutes in. I swapped backs and loaded a roll of Portra 400 (Ish’s film, brought along for the day). This is the right moment for a Portra 400 observation that I do not get to make often.
Portra 400 in Canada is meaningfully cheaper than Portra 400 in the UK. A roll of 120 Portra 400 in the UK currently costs around £15. In Canada, the same roll is around C$13, which works out to about £7.50 at current exchange rates. Roughly half the price. The difference is partly currency and partly local taxation, plus the size of the photographic market in each country. North America has more film shooters and more shops, with more competitive pricing as a result. The UK is a small specialist market with high import margins.
I am not going to bulk-buy Portra 400 in Canada to ship home (the freight and customs would eat most of the saving) but I did shoot more rolls on this trip than I would have done in the UK. Worth the awareness if you are travelling.
Portra 400 itself is the colour negative film that most working portrait photographers default to when they are shooting film commercially. The skin tones are warm but accurate and the latitude is really generous (you can overexpose by two stops without losing anything). The grain at box speed is finer than HP5 in black and white. Kodak know what they are doing with this emulsion. The studio frames on Portra 400 came back beautifully. Sherri’s skin rendered exactly the way I had hoped.
The Rolleiflex 6006 makes a guest appearance
About halfway through the Portra roll I tried the 6006 again. The battery had been charging for an hour. I had Sherri hold her pose and set the camera up handheld at 1/30 of a second, then fired.
The 6006 actually got a frame. The film advanced (audibly, but it advanced a full frame this time). The shutter fired. I took another frame for safety. Same thing. The battery had picked up enough charge to drive the motor through a full cycle a couple of times before the issue resurfaced.
I am not going to pretend this is a happy ending for the 6006. The camera is going to need a proper battery rebuild before it is reliable again. But the fact that it managed any frames on the day was a small win, and the two frames it did capture (which I will probably never use commercially but which I am pleased to have) are a reminder that the camera is essentially sound. The battery is the problem, not the camera.
I will report back when the battery rebuild is done.
The Ish-style finale
The final setup of the day was Ish’s idea, and different from anything I had been doing.
Ish’s signature style involves photographing subjects against coloured background papers with extremely harsh, directional light producing crisp shadows on the paper. It is a graphic, editorial-magazine look. He suggested we end the shoot by trying one of his setups, and I agreed because the chance to learn a technique from a photographer who has actually mastered it is one of the reasons you collaborate.
We took the diffuser off the main light, repositioned Sherri against a coloured paper backdrop and set the light high and to one side so the shadow of her head fell sharply onto the paper at an angle. I shot the setup on the ETRS with the 75mm lens. Sherri looked down at the floor, then up at the camera, then to one side. The frames I am most curious about are the ones where her eyes are closed and her head is tilted slightly. They look like the kind of thing you would see in a fashion magazine.
I do not think I will be defaulting to Ish’s style on my own shoots (it requires a confidence with harsh light that I am still building) but I am really pleased to have tried it. The lesson is that you should never close yourself off to a technique just because it is not the way you would normally work. Try it, see what you get, take what is useful and move on.
Verdict on the Bronica ETRS
I do not have many cameras that I would describe as a favourite, but the ETRS is one of them.
The build quality is very solid (mine has been around the world several times and is still working without complaint). The leaf-shutter lens system is the right choice for studio work with flash, which is what I use it for most. The 6x4.5 format gives you fifteen frames per roll, which is enough for a full shoot without needing to reload every five minutes. The lenses are sharp and the meter is reliable. The whole thing is light enough to actually carry around.
If you are looking for a way into medium format with a system that will not bankrupt you, the ETRS is genuinely hard to beat. £200 will buy you a body with a 75mm lens and a film back. Another £100 will get you a 50mm wide. Another £100 will get you a 150mm short telephoto. For £400 you have a three-lens medium format kit that will produce frames that will outlive you.
The Rolleiflex 6006 is technically more capable (TTL flash metering and motor wind, plus better build in places) but is also more fragile and more expensive to maintain, and considerably more prone to going wrong. The ETRS is the camera I would recommend to someone starting out in 645. The 6006 is the camera I would recommend to someone who likes a project.
Credits
Big thanks to Sherri Johnson for modelling on what turned out to be a longer day than expected. Sherri is based in Toronto and books through her ModelMayhem page. If you are looking for a model in the Toronto area, highly recommended.
And to Ish Ghazarian for the lighting help, the final setup idea and the company on the day. Ish has his own YouTube channel where he covers portrait photography and his own work. Worth a subscribe if portrait work is your thing.
If you have a Bronica ETRS or ETRSi and you want to share what you have used it for, the comments under the video are open. So is the contact form here.
Back to the UK soon, where I will be reunited with my flash setup and probably ungrateful about how expensive the film is.