I keep coming back to the camera time and time again. bit of a silly lens unless you intend to use the camera for landscape work.Ī. No decent telephoto support either - the biggest telephoto you can get for it is a 210mm lens - at f8 !!!! and it's not even coupled to the rangefiner - so you have to guess the focus point. Close focussing is terrible, due to limitations gaining accurate focus with a rangefinder system. What are the other limitations of the Mamiya 7?Ī. So images are often sharper than systems with large shutters that are 6x7 in size! The Mamiya 7 System has the shutters placed inside the lenses, making the shutter tiny - and therefore less prone to vibration. Because it makes the system more compact (no mirror in the way), you also get to see the scene at the point of exposure (no mirror flipping out of the way for a moment obscuring your view) and the system is also very, very quiet (no mirror to make a big slapping noise). So why use this system if it doesn't allow you to see through the lens then?Ī. this requires some mechanical calibration so that when the images are overlapped correctly, the lens is actually in focus. The problem with this is that focus is achieved by overlapping two paralax images onto the same spot. You actually view through a side window an 'approximation' of what you will get. A rangefinder is a system where you do not look through the lens. Slow lenses, but on the bright side, because they are slow lenses, they're not that bulky / heavy / big. So the best compromise is to make the lenses slower. it's not that deep is it? If your focussing is slightly off, chances are that at f2 you're going to notice it. Now think about the DOF (depth of field) you have on a 90mm lens in 35mm land. For instance, a standard lens in MF land is 80mm or 90mm. This is because Mamiya couldn't guarantee precise focussing with a rangefinder MF system. With maximum apertures of f4.5, they are a few stops slower than other MF systems. This is the real downside - depending on what you are shooting. Point the camera down and the horizon is at the top of the frame - straight as an arrow. The distortion in these lenses is almost non existent. The wide angles in particular extend right into the camera body and are a few mm close up to the film plane. It's a rangefinder system, so the lens designs were not compromised by having to 'work around' there being a mirror in the way. Try out many other MF systems and you'll soon see why the Mamiya is great for compactness and light lenses.Ī. I do a lot of traveling and it's important that the camera is light and that the lenses are light too. Because first and foremost, I wanted something with maximum resolution and lightest weight. Why did I choose this camera over other Medium Format systems?Ī. But for those that are intrigued by the camera and want to know what I think about it, I'm going to give you the low down here and now. I feel that many people assume that having the same camera as me is going to make their images better, which I misleading. I get a lot of e-mails regarding the Mamiya 7 camera, which I use extensively for my travel and landscape shots.