I'm considering a Mamiya 7II for my medium format shooting desires. Can those who own, or have owned, give me your opinions on pros and cons? What is the camera made of? How accurate is the meter? Tell me about lenses--I want a "normal" and a wide. Battery life? I had a Hasselblad 501CM for a little while and decided it wasn't my style of shooting. The GA645Wi I just sold was limited to one FL. So, I'm now considering the 7II.
The best lenses you'll ever find. Never use the meter as I use a Minolta Flashmeter 6. I've had mine for three and a half years with the 43, 50, 65 and 80 and have yet to replace the battery. I consider mine a fantastic extreme wide to normal medium format Leica but with even better glass. Downside is slow lens changes compared to 35 and not so close minimum focusing distances. Will post a recent shot later.
I just got one. I have a lot of experience shooting a Mamiya 645, a little shooting a 501CM, and none shooting a rangefinder before this.
As soon as I shot my first roll I knew I was going to love the camera. With the 65/4 it's about the same size as my D700 with 35/1.4... a little taller, but slimmer and noticeably lighter.
I just got it so can't comment on battery life, though I have left it on for pretty much the entire 2 weeks by accident, and put 5 rolls through, and it seems fine. The meter is finicky, and you've got to get to know it. With the 65 it's kind of a big spot meter. I like it, though, for zone-style metering.
Oh, and the shutter is quiet to the point where if I'm not in total silence I can't even hear it.
Admittedly I'm in the honeymoon period with this camera, but I've never found a negative review from the system unless it was in regards to <1meter focusing. The parallax correction also seems very good.
The 43mm lens is arguably the finest lens ever made for that FOV. The lenses are all good, but the 43mm is a legend. Handling is sweet, too: it's a great system.
I have used Mamiya 6 a fair amount; honestly I don't think the metering and shutter control is going to be all that different than the 7/7II.
The LR44/SR44 batteries are indefatigable on this camera, it seemingly needs very little power and the meter shuts off anyway, if the button isn't held down - even if you leave the power switch on.
A Mamiya 7II would be nice but it's still a current system hence the lenses are really a bit more expensive than the limited range on The Six. Ohh, but that 43mm looks so nice.
For what it's worth - I've put paws on a more than a few cameras, and the Mamiya RFs are just great. Metering and framing isn't guaranteed, but I can always count on vibration-free, crisp images, big format in small package. With theses cameras, bad photos are always user error.
(like leaving on the lenscap!)
I really really like my Six and hope to keep shooting with it as long as possible. I trust it, I like it, I feel comfortable with it. It hasn't let me down.
Oh, and of course, drum scanned on the Howtek with Trident 4.0. I'll add that with T-Max100, with these lenses and some of the RZ lenses (50, 65 and 210APO) you can actually see an increase in detail going from 4000 ppi to 8000 ppi on the drum scanner. It ain't much but it's there, and that says a lot. Of course, since there are no intermediate resolutions between 4000 and 8000 there's no way to tell precisely where the limit is.
Ditto what has been said already. I think this is basically the best camera system in existence for medium-format. The lenses are world-class, bar none. If you can live with the minor rangefinder issues (not looking through the lens, minor parallax, no close focusing, fastest lens is f/4), it just doesn't get any better. I have the whole system, including all 6 lenses, the polaroid back, close-up kit and more. Since getting it, I haven't even shot anything else, neglecting my whole EOS rig and other cameras.
The tests by the user Chris Perez show the 80 to be super sharp. And ironically, that's the least-sharp lens in the whole system - all the others are actually SHARPER, believe it or not.
I have several articles including a lens test of 5 of the 6 lenses (by Pop Photo), posted here:
The lp/mm numbers for the lenses are basically on par or better than the best 35mm lenses ever made, and add that to a negative that is 5x bigger, and it's easy to see the Mamiya 7 will trump all comers in the resolution department.
For lenses, I'd say the 43 or 50 is a must-have. From there, the next best choices are probably the 65, 150, 80, 210 in that order.
I have a spare 150 I have available to sell if you are interested. Also have a spare 43mm viewfinder, and spare 150/210 viewfinder to sell too.
I'd consider saving a few $ and getting a regular Mamiya 7 body vs. the 7II. The II doesn't add much, but usually commands a premium price. I've had both, kept the regular 7. (now I am looking for a 2nd one for the polaroid back though.)
The body is cast/machined aluminum internally, with plastic outer skin. It's pretty rugged overall, though the fit/finish isn't quite up to the best of the EOS line. (things like plastic mold lines, etc.). Ergonomically though it's easily the best MF camera out there I think. Very light and compact also, about the same as a 35mm body with grip and lens.
A 6x7 digital sensor?!??!?! You're nuts! But it could be marketable someday...
Perhaps some sort of digital capture mechanism that resembles film thickness - that would be amazing.
you2 wrote:
I liked the format (and lenses). Keep having hopes Mamiya will introduce a digital version (perhaps with evf view finder) at an affordable price
I wonder if there would be any problems given how severe the angle of illumination is coming from the back of especially the two widest lenses, with a digital sensor. The rear element of the 43 is very close to the film plane. Still it would be very interesting to see these great lenses on a high res sensor.
Peter Figen wrote:
I wonder if there would be any problems given how severe the angle of illumination is coming from the back of especially the two widest lenses, with a digital sensor. The rear element of the 43 is very close to the film plane. Still it would be very interesting to see these great lenses on a high res sensor.
I keep thinking about medium format lensmounts with electronic contacts, like the Bronica PG, Mamiya G or N, or Contax 645, and how it would be great in the future if there were some sort of legacy lensmout/coupling options that can communicate with those lenses, telling them what shutter speeds to use (or in the case of the Contax, aperture and AF), but let you choose what to interface with, on a neutral digital body.
Someday those technologies will be available. There are already patents issued for fiber-optic backs that connect to a digital sensor in the same way a polaroid back connects to the Mamiya 7. Basically a fiber-optic block that transfers the image. THere are even patents issued for enlarging/reducing variants of those, where the fiberoptic block is tapered to enlarge or reduce the image being transferred, e.g. from 6x7 to a smaller sensor size.
Current fiberoptic blocks (say from Edmund optics) can achieve greater than 120 lp/mm without trouble, so there could be potential for this idea, without compromising image quality.
The fiber optic blocks would probably also have a collimating effect (telecentricity) in that it would make all the light rays parallel so the issue of angle-of-light-hitting-the-sensor from the non-retrofocus wides like the 43mm would be dealt with nicely.
Peter Figen wrote:
I wonder if there would be any problems given how severe the angle of illumination is coming from the back of especially the two widest lenses, with a digital sensor. The rear element of the 43 is very close to the film plane. Still it would be very interesting to see these great lenses on a high res sensor.
With current commercially available technology? Yes. Go to a Leica forum and read about the M8/M9
Peter raises a fine point - I have used a lot of medium format rangefinders and the rear elements on the Mamiya 7 wide lenses are just so close to the film plane, same with the 50mm on the Mamiya 6. Wjlapier, keep this in mind if you go ahead - I once had to exchange a few such lenses before finding one with no marks, it's not necessarily bad handling by the owner...the rear is protected by a shallow flange, but care is necessary until you get the feel for it.
The 43mm, while outstanding, is extremely wide on the squarish 4:5 aspect of the 6x7 format, around 21mm - think of it as the MF world's Distagon 21mm, minus the moustache distortion. The better wide for most people is the later 50mm, for about a 25mm AOV. The better normal lens is the 65mm rather than the 80mm, I feel - 32mm AOV equivalent rather than 39mm for the 80; then again the 80mm is cheapish, light and very small so easy to get it as well for street use if that is your go. Like the Leicas M series, these are really wide angle cameras, with a couple of longer options.
The meter is not a high point. It's not bad, but if you like using say, Velvia, you really want a spotmeter. The meter covers a fixed area, so it differs in coverage between lenses from a spot to full frame. The big things are industry best: the peerless shutter (about as good as my Hexar AF), film flatness, huge bright VF along with fine ergonomics. Rugged enough and good interlock system.
The MTF works for you in other ways...you can use lower apertures (f16-f19) with little deterioration because the sharpest settings at f8-f11 are so astronomical - there is no fall off a cliff with MF. And you can also crop quite seriously, to get a narrower AOV. They are now pretty affordable too. Two thumbs up!
Now it would be quite interesting to take the M7 43 and attach one of the aforementioned fiberoptics blocks to it and if it was possible, one that would, say, reduce the approx. 59 x 69 mm 6x7 format to the current size med. format chip, if that is indeed possible. Maybe I'm way off base here, but that would be very interesting - or you could just by a Rodenstock or Digitar 23, 24 or 28mm and be done with it.
In all the comparisons I've made, they are very close to equal in absolute resolution - 6x7 drum scanned compared to 21-24 mp dslr but resolution is only part of the picture (pun intended). For black and white especially, there is just no comparing the tonality and texture of film to the super clean look of digital. It's also the way that film naturally rolls off in the highlights where digital is much more abrupt in the same transitions. For commercial work, it's digital all the way, but for personal and fine art work I'll shoot film whenever possible.
Also - how big of print are you going to be making? I've got lots of 30x40ish test prints tacked to the wall here at my studio and at that size, the scanned 6x7's just look more natural than the Canon files. Instead of continuing the silly megabyte race, Canon and Nikon should concentrate more of their energies into making their digital files have better tonality, dynamic range and a more analog feel to them. I love sharp as much as the next guy, but that's not the most important quality I'm looking for. I want mood and feeling and could care less if there is visible grain or noise in the image as long as it says what I want it to say.
I own 3 Mamiay 7s and 5 lenses (the 210mm is really an aerial or infinity focus lens) as well as the 21 Mp 5D. I wet scan the 6x7cm film image on the platen of my V750. 35mm FF film (really 135) and 20-25Mp DSLR sensors are thought by many to be equivalent in detail/information (although each has its own characteristics).
The 6x7cm images are 5 to 7 times the area of FF (depending on the aspect ratio of the crop). The files are, corresponding, larger too. I don't struggle to see the extra 6x7 Mamiya detail and can only equal it with stitching, approx, two rows of 4 images with the 5D MkII.
The Mamiya 7 meter is good but for exact metering I use a DSLR's RGB display and transpose the settings. Understand that a RF camera (remember those immortal Leica RF lenses) uses, much easier to make, non-retro focus lenses.
Those lenses can snuggle right up to the film plane (especially the 43!) W/O the mirror box. This is no problem for film but, yes, a problem for the Leica M8/M9 digital sensor's photosites. Mamiya lenses are extremely well made and can smoke the Hassleblad reflexes and hold their own (some say better) with most any other lens.
short answer, the camera is plastic covered but feels really sturdy. The meter is aiight but not the greatest. The camera is really nice and the lenses are astonishing. If you want the best quality in a handholdable package, I don't think you can beat the mamiya 7 except maybe a 4x5 press camera with all its limitations.
