There is a specific rhythm to exploring Berlin with a camera like the Mamiya C330. This isn’t like some of my other cameras. You don’t use it to snap pictures, as the kids say. To me, this is a camera for constructing pictures, if that is something that I can say.
After a previous photo walk using infrared film in Kreuzberg, I was open to taking this beautiful beast somewhere that matched its heavy-duty soul. The Aerodynamic Park in Berlin-Adlershof felt like the obvious choice.
The pictures you can see here are from May 2024. I didn’t have a good night of sleep one day, and I decided to feel productive and left the house with my Mamiya C330 at hand. I took my bike on a photographic ride to Berlin-Adlershof with a goal in mind: I wanted to test an Ilford HP5 with some red filters.
Not only that, but I had wondered about how the red filter would affect the pictures from the Mamiya C330 for a while. And since it was a bright, sunny day, it felt like it was the right time to put this idea into practice.
Capturing the Alien Architecture of Berlin-Adlershof on Medium Format
Located in the southeast of Berlin on the Humboldt University campus, the Aerodynamic Park is not a proper park. It is home to a collection of aviation research structures that look like they were plucked straight from a 1930s science fiction set.
If you’ve read what I wrote about the location before, you know that I have a soft spot in my heart for concrete geometry and architecture. Bringing the Mamiya C330 there felt like a meeting of different eras of engineering.
One of the first places I went to visit was the Trudelturm, also known as the Vertical Spin Tunnel. There I found myself leaning into the meditative process that I mentioned in my Mamiya C330 review. Looking down into the waist-level viewfinder, the world looks reversed and glowing. Maybe it was the lack of sleep; possibly it was really glowing during that morning. I will never know. But the Trudelturm, with its egg-shaped concrete shell, never looked more alien to me.
Because the Mamiya C330 uses a bellows system for focusing, I managed to get surprisingly close to a window that reflected deeply the concrete structures behind me. That was the moment I realized that I made the right choice of camera.
One of the reasons why I call the Mamiya C330 my almost perfect travel camera is the versatility that it brings to any photo walk. While most TLR cameras lock you into using a single focal length, this camera allows for more. And I spent the time in Adlershof swapping between my 80 mm lenses and the wider 55 mm lenses that I brought along. Again, another excellent decision that I made even after a terrible night of no sleep. The 55 mm lens was essential for capturing the massive, concrete curves of the Großer Windkanal, also known as the Big Wind Tunnel in English.
The weight of the Mamiya C330, which can be a problem on longer trips, helped me a bit here. I believe it forced me to slow down and cycle from one place to the other and consider every frame. The area was quiet, the sun was shining, and I think my patience was rewarded with some of my favorite architectural pictures I ever took. Especially because every click felt to me like preserving a piece of Berlin science history.
The Meditative Frame: Exploring Aerodynamic Park with a Twin Lens Reflex
As illustrated by the pictures here, shooting in Adlershof isn’t the same as taking pictures in Mitte or Neukölln. Especially in the early morning, this place is for silence, wind, and some imposing shapes. The Mamiya C330, with its mechanical noises and manual precision, was the perfect tool to document the technical structures I saw there. \
The negatives that came out of that early morning photo walk have a depth and range that digital sensors would struggle to replicate. This is one of the many reasons why I started shooting film cameras back in the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you are looking for a photo walk that moves you away from the typical Berlin street scenes and sights, pack a few rolls of film and head to Adlershof. You’ll be honored to witness a bit of aerodynamic history and some of my favorite concrete structures that this city has to offer. And there is no better way to see them than through the lens of a classic TLR camera like the Mamiya C330.
