Are those still practical at all or is this just a really specific interest of yours?
I mean, old cameras are such beautiful things. I really appreciate the mechanical craftsmanship and the entire brown townog process, but it's definitely still practical and I had a few reasons for buying this specific camera (I previously owned a Argoflex E).
First and foremost, I want to transition into doing most of my creative work with film, even if I scan and edit it in Photoshop. It's more in line with my interest, where I want a shutter release to be a culmination of a carefully considered and constructed image, and each photograph to be a finely crafted object. Digital photography is a much more "photograph/respond to what you just did" and stream of consciousness, since you don't have to give each shutter release as much reverence.
The reason that I want to use this format specifically is that 35mm film is too low resolution (I mean, it's good resolution, but not if you're printing decently large or want incredibly sharp pictures which I'm looking for) and large format film is too expensive. For example, each roll of color film for this camera costs about $6 and $5 to develop, so about a dollar per picture. 4x5 sheets cost $3.30 and $3 to develop, so $6 per picture. I mean, the photos produced are
remarkably beautiful, but again, it gets to be cost prohibitive very quickly.
And finally, I specifically bought the C220 because my previous medium format camera (which I bought because I used that camera at school and wanted my own, not wanting to go outside my experience to buy a camera) only took an archaic spool size so I had to respool film to shoot with it, the lenses were nasty and cloudy and I wasn't getting good sharpness out of it, and the viewfinder was almost impossible to focus with. The C220, which I borrowed from a friend for a while, has a vivid viewfinder, interchangeable lenses, and takes normal 120 medium format film.
For reference, here are some photos:
Scanned photo from my old medium format. As you can see it has a pleasing archaic aesthetic to it (the camera was made in the 1940s) but it's lacking in sharpness and good detail resolution.
This is a scanned 4x5 sheet, unedited. When you look at the full size scan at 100%, you can see individual branches on the trees on the opposite side of the lake with decent clarity.
