The Mamiya C330f TLR Camera: My First Medium Format Camera

In my early camera collecting days, I was living in the suburbs of Portland, OR scrolling FB Marketplace and OfferUp looking for single digit or double digit deals. I did not end up with anything too crazy; maybe a kodak Hawkeye Junior or an Agfa folder. Many times the cameras were cheap because they used an obsolete film.

At the time I was just entering the entertainment or “research” side of camera shopping, and modern film photographers and content creators like Willem Verbeeck were on my watch list.

He recommended the little brother model to his Mamiya RZ67, which had to have been the Mamiya m645 or a similar model. Several years later, the exact details escape me.

I began shopping for a Mamiya to start my medium format journey. I had at one point purchased a box camera and sent a roll of Fomapan through it. I didn’t know what I was doing but I had home developing chemistry so it didn’t seem like it mattered that much since the cost was low.

Looking back, there are a dozen models of medium format cameras I would look into before anything in the Mamiya 645 line up.

At the time, I had no clue where to shop for a reliable camera, so the second hand marketplaces I had been frequenting were the only ones I knew to buy from, aside from dumb luck with antique or thrift store visits.

On FB marketplace, I met a guy named Bill. He sold me his Mamiya C330f and it changed everything for me.

A Medium Format Camera, with Quirks, but A Camera Nonetheless!

It was not working perfectly, but when the film advanced as it was meant to, and the shutter cocked, and the camera fired, it worked so incredibly well.

Mine had a little quirk that only gave me 10 frames instead of 12 per roll. The spacing issues and film advance issues continued to evolve and fight me. Sometimes it would benefit me and I would end up with 13 frames (12 and a half, really) per roll.

It had no internal light meter so I learned to use an app on my phone, slowly. Eventually I got myself an external light meter.

It was really the beginning of understanding what aperture or shutter speed actually did, and being able to think ahead to what I wanted and setting my shutter speed and aperture according to what the frame needed. Much of this discovery happened on accident and in conversation with other photographers when showing some of my work.

New Camera, New Ideas, New Experiments

I don’t know why it took such a different camera than my usual 35mm cameras to open up some options. Without ever knowing why, this camera opened up new ideas and creativity for me.

I began buying film I had never tried. I bought a tripod and did some sloppy bracketing before I ever learned about reciprocity failure. For the first time, I pushed black and white film. That was a scary experience, purely because I had no clue what I was doing.

But it worked.

I carried it to outings and different events, and I walked alone in towns and through wooded areas with it. I took it on holiday and documented places I’ll never see again.

In many ways it became a dear companion, like my Nikon FM.

All Good Things Come to an End

You might see where this is going.

It gave me 10 frames instead of 12 per roll, until it didn’t anymore. I put one last roll in and took a self portrait. I wound the film advance crank and it kept spinning. It skipped frames until it didn’t even give me 6 frames per roll. The last roll was only 5 frames. At that point, I knew it was time to retire the camera.

A Black and White Self portrait on Kodak Professional film with the Mamiya C330f Film Camera.

I stopped feeding it film. It sat on my shelf next to whatever cameras came through my collection. The current in-use pile began to grow.

One day I had some flowers on the table beginning to shed petals. I brought out all the cameras that had film sitting in them and emptied every single one on this photo shoot.

I compiled many of them into a book with a secondary title: A Longwinded Fairwell to my Mamiya C330f.

The Life (and Death) of My Mamiya C330f

I’ve since replaced the camera with another TLR, and again with an earlier model: the Mamiya C330.

It has been a lifetime since that camera opened up ideas and photographic avenues. My ever-growing body of work was largely shaped by what I learned when that was my go-to medium format camera.