I've actually been meaning to pick one up for the longest time.. I had a Voigtlander RF for fun, and liked it so much I picked up an M8, I didn't like the M8 as it had to many problems for the price. Then I decided that I'd stick to my Canon system, as it's best suited for my work. Though, I've come to realize that while using film, the film cameras I end up keeping are the medium format ones. I like medium format film, it just appeals to me. So with that said, I've been thinking long and hard about getting the 7II as it's the best of both worlds, a RF which I love, and MF which I would end up using, and being happy using...
Now finding one with all the lenses, at a price I can digest, thats another story.
Great stuff to read. Got me excited about the purchase, which will happen after the end of April when more fun money becomes available. Thanx for taken part in the discussion--I should have done this long ago.
With careful shopping on ebay and elsewhere, you can occasionally find decent deals on the lenses and various pieces. The best option is package deals - these usually sell at a fairly good discount compared to buying parts individually. I've done that a few times (which is how I ended up with extra lenses and viewfinders to sell), and the market is still pretty strong for the Mamiya 7 so getting your money back out of a package deal (if it has something you dont' want) is not too hard.
I have the 43 and previously owned the 50. Both are incredibly sharp. For shots with near/far depth of field, there is an interesting lens characteristic to make note of -- what's sharp is extremely sharp, but the transition area from sharp to not sharp is very fast. The often quoted trick of not trusting the focusing scale and using a setting that's 1-2 stops more conservative works well for me. (i.e., if you need depth of field that the scale says is at f/8, stop down to f/16).
Let me ask you guys this. If I wanted to buy a new 7II, prices at B+H Photo are almost $2000 more than what I could pay for the same package from one of the Japan dealers on ebay. In fact, I've bought from sk_photo before and shipping was fast, and the items were perfectly fine. Are these grey market cameras? Warranty issues with Mamiya if you buy from sk_photo? The one's from sk_photo are definitely in my price range, and I could add a wide later if I purchased internationally. So, why the big difference in prices internationally vs US?
If I were to buy new, I would first check out Robert White in the UK. Their prices have been among the best and their service is outstanding, even to the point of (for a friend of mine) ordering matched pairs of lenses with the exact same focal length (yes, there are minute variations) for medium format stereo photography. I've seen some of these 3-D images through my friend's custom prototype viewer and they are simply amazing.
You can ask MAC, formerly Mamiya America, why they feel they have to charge so much more in the US than any other distributor in the world charges. They claim it's service and marketing, but of which they lay very little legitimate claim to.
I bought my body, 80 and 43 from Samy's and the the rest from eBay. I got the 65 for something like $750 on a Buy It Now, which was a bargain. It came three days later from Japan and looked like it had never been on a camera. You can check for wear on the focusing cam on the lens and on this lens not even the paint was worn off.
Agreed with Peter - MAC in the US makes new pricing on this stuff from BH, etc, egregiously high. The Hong Kong or Japan sellers on Ebay, or White in the UK, are better bets. All things I've heard on the new-in-box models from Ebay sellers in HK or Singapore are good, people seem to have good luck with those sellers but all the stuff I've bought I got used (though most all of it in near-mint shape).
As for being gray market, yes - but that should generally be a non-issue I'd think. Worst case scenario you send it back to japan for warranty repairs instead of to MAC. Once out of warranty, MAC will work on basically anything (and charge for it of course), from what I have heard.
A Mamiya 7 with 65mm lens (I'm not really an extreme-wide guy) is just about the only thing that could get me to go back to film. It's certainly true that the DR and "highlight behavior" of negative film is better than what you get from a digital sensor. All that being said, what you get from a 1Ds2 and 35L is remarkable and more usable for what I do--let alone the fact that I already own it and it's three stops faster.
I will probably pick one up one day if a good deal comes along, but like Peter said, it would be for personal use and not commercial work.
I see portraits in The New Yorker magazine all time that were shot on film, so at least there are some still shooting for commercial purposes. I know I'm taking film to San Antonio in a few weeks but will let the situation dictate what is the best route to take. Well, that would be Interstate 10 East...
There is a guy there, Julio - he's in the parts/repair department and is pretty helpful. I had to speak with him about lens elements and lenshood mount rings a few times. I will say, call MAC and you KNOW you're talking to people in the NJ/NY area ;-) per the "richness" of accent. Ed Sawyer wrote:
Once out of warranty, MAC will work on basically anything (and charge for it of course), from what I have heard.
I was once told-all the 7 lenses, were much more prone to diffraction- than other medium format lenses. Is that fact or fiction? I heard that from several trusted sources, long time friends, who are camera dealers and users.
Kingfish - I think whoever told you that didn't know what they were talking about and certainly didn't understand optics very well. The Mamiya lenses react pretty much the same as every other lens I've used, hitting a sweet spot between f/8 and f/11, gradually falling off as you stop down but still eminently usable at f/16 or even f/22 if needed. None of the lenses I own go to f/32, but I'd expect pretty much any lens used there would suffer.
Hi Peter.
I dont believe i mentioned F32-you did , sir. I stated they said these lenses stopped down, had diffraction problems. These two folks very well understand optics-as you may think you do, also. I havent owned them, as i had and used the entire Hassalblad, Pentax and Mamiya systems. Mine were SLR systems, not rangefinder.
Take care.
Harry
Kingfish - Have you actually used these lenses? I have and they don't have any more diffraction "problem" than any other lens. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that diffraction gets gradually worse as you stop the lens down. I only mentioned f/32 because the longer M7 lenses do stop down that far. The others are either f/16 or f/22. What I've seen with my own eyes are that they are like any other lens. They peak between 8 and 11 and get GRADUALLY softer as you continue to stop them down, but by no means are unusable at all at f/16 or even f/22. I would not call that a diffraction problem. If your pals think there is a problem, let's see images that illustrate what they consider problematic. Seriously, there is no problem.
In the late 90s/early 2000s I had the M7 and M7 II with the whole set of 6 lenses: 43, 50, 65, 80, 150 and the "mountain" 210/8. The gap between 80 and 150 mm lenses is inexcusable.
The lenses are optically first rate, with APO-like performance. The body is lightweight and smooth to operate. The lightweight combination is unlike typical MF systems and great for hiking around with.
Main annoyances for me were that the wides have a lot of cos^4 light falloff and need an external finder. The metering is also not so good. You'll want a spotmeter with some lenses.
Spyro P. wrote:
Do you guys reckon these cameras have a resolution advantage compared to a high mp full frame DSLR? I sort of struggle to see it, even drum scanned.
You wouldn't see it here. You'd see it on a large print.
Just like to add the link to Klaus Puskas interesting article, which gave me a quite interesting practical feeling of the difference between Canon's 5DII and Mamiya's 7: http://naturewindows.com/articles/article090116.html
