I am looking at buying a 180mm F4.5 and noticed a wide variety of available lenses on the used market named almost the same. The only differences are the letters nw, Z, or W... which is the best version? or the newest?
Does anyone own this lens/camera combo and mind sharing some pics? Particularly portraiture.
There are two "new" versions of the 180. The W-N and the short barrel. Optically, they are identical, save for the fact that the short barrel can be used with the tilt-shift adapter.
I have the regular 180 W-N, and an RZ67 Pro II. Love the setup for portraits, the bokeh is killer. I'm out of town at the moment, but can post some samples after the holidays.
The 180 W-N is a great and very affordable lens. If you can find it try to get the 210mm f4.5 APO instead as it's the best RZ optic around that focal range. It's a more sophisticated design with ultra-low dispersion glass for elimination of chromatic abberation
Qwerty64 wrote:
The 180 W-N is a great and very affordable lens. If you can find it try to get the 210mm f4.5 APO instead as it's the best RZ optic around that focal range. It's a more sophisticated design with ultra-low dispersion glass for elimination of chromatic abberation
I have the 210 APO and it's served me well over the years however it doesn't have the smoothest Bokeh. But it is a nice lens, and very cheap these days.
As mentioned, the 180/4.5 W-N is the one to get. I just sold one, actually. It's a fantastic lens, super-smooth bokeh. I am not sure if the bokeh is better than the 210. I have the 210 APO now so figured I could part with the 180 but if the 210 bokeh is not great, I may have to reacquire the 180.
Usually a nice 180 W-N can be had in the $150-200 range. 210 APOs are usually $500+, so a fairly big gap there.
Generally all the RZ lenses are quite good, most are a pretty good bargain too on the used market. The ULD/LA/APOs still fetch good money but the regular lenses are like 10 cents on the dollar vs. orignal new retail prices.
For portraits I find I mostly use the 110, and 180/210 for head shots. the 65 (and even the 50) is great for environmental portraits. For longer distance, uber-smooth bokeh, very tight shots, the 250 APO and 350 APO are great too.
the 110 is a great lens too, excellent for portraits and just general use. Nice bokeh, and the fastest/smallest/lightest lens in the system.
I just bought a 180 wn from B&H. It should be here Friday. I will play with it over the weekend and hopefully have some impressions posted on this thread by next week sometime. Thanks for the feedback everyone.
Do you guys feel that the Mamiya RZ lenses would have the resolution needed for FF 35mm DSLR? I have been looking at the APO line, as 210 and 350mm can be found at occation. I know they lack any focusing device. Thatīs just mechanics. But how is it with the aperture control, is it manual or electrical only. Of some reason this is never mentioned anywhere (where I have searched). Thanks. /Anders
All the RZ lenses have a manual aperture control on the lens- there is nothing electronic other than the shutter speed control. That being said, I don't think it's possible to adapt them to a 35mm system, despite the fact that they would be plenty sharp on them. That is unless you want to use a makeshift LF bellows system
Z250SA wrote:
Do you guys feel that the Mamiya RZ lenses would have the resolution needed for FF 35mm DSLR? I have been looking at the APO line, as 210 and 350mm can be found at occation. I know they lack any focusing device. Thatīs just mechanics. But how is it with the aperture control, is it manual or electrical only. Of some reason this is never mentioned anywhere (where I have searched). Thanks. /Anders
Manual aperture, no focus helicoid for both the RB/RZ system. It's the shutter which is electronic on the RZ's.
New RZ designs should be up to the demands of 35mm digital as they do well on 60+MP MFDB's.
I shot a roll with RZ67 II and 180. It was just my second try with MF film so I should not have expected miracles. Got a couple nice images. I found the f4.5 a bit limiting. The best part was focusing on RZ67, so much better than 35mm. But even then I got so many misfocused images .
ps. bokeh is very smooth.
2nd the brightscreen recommendation. I was lucky to find one on ebay, for a good price. New they are a lot but used $50-100 is fairly normal. Not that easy to find though, used.
The W-N version allows for setting your aperture between whole F stops...I shot with the RZ and RZ11 a much better body for several years. My fav lenses the 50 ULD, 110, 180, 350 and 500 APO.
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