Michael Carter
10-12-2007, 12:08 PM
Any of you engineering guys playing with this?
I was looking at my Mamiya gear the other day; haven't shot film in ages, was thinking of eBaying it all... but man, even the original RB bodies & lenses seem like great adapter raw materials...
The RB and RB ProS are just boxes with a bellows, mirror, and (giant) focusing screen. (The differences between the pro and pro s deal primarily with film advance and dark-slide safety - they're the same as far as making an adapter would go).
Why would this excite film makers? Well, first off, test all of your 35mm lenses. You'll find they're generally sharpest at around f5.6, with most being remarkably soft wide open... but with adapter light-loss, lots of you guys must be struggling just to shoot wide open, much less stopping down. Most of the big Mamiya lenses have a sharper operating range.
Next would be the GIANT imaging circle... 6 centimeters for medium format - that's 60mm on the ground glass; talk about reducing grain size (by, literally, almost 50%). And that's with 6x6 gear; 6x7 (like the mamiyas) would give you a 70mm x 60mm imaging area.
Cons? Weight & size issues... sticking a mamiya or hasselblad box on your camera would take a rail system. Also, the lenses have shutters built-in, adding more weight. AND the lenses arent as fast; there's few 2.8's in the 6x6/6x7 MF world.
On the plus side (again) there's a lot of russian hassy knock-offs out there as well...
Just looking at that big mirror box, and thinking "wow, you could get a motor in there..."
I was looking at my Mamiya gear the other day; haven't shot film in ages, was thinking of eBaying it all... but man, even the original RB bodies & lenses seem like great adapter raw materials...
The RB and RB ProS are just boxes with a bellows, mirror, and (giant) focusing screen. (The differences between the pro and pro s deal primarily with film advance and dark-slide safety - they're the same as far as making an adapter would go).
Why would this excite film makers? Well, first off, test all of your 35mm lenses. You'll find they're generally sharpest at around f5.6, with most being remarkably soft wide open... but with adapter light-loss, lots of you guys must be struggling just to shoot wide open, much less stopping down. Most of the big Mamiya lenses have a sharper operating range.
Next would be the GIANT imaging circle... 6 centimeters for medium format - that's 60mm on the ground glass; talk about reducing grain size (by, literally, almost 50%). And that's with 6x6 gear; 6x7 (like the mamiyas) would give you a 70mm x 60mm imaging area.
Cons? Weight & size issues... sticking a mamiya or hasselblad box on your camera would take a rail system. Also, the lenses have shutters built-in, adding more weight. AND the lenses arent as fast; there's few 2.8's in the 6x6/6x7 MF world.
On the plus side (again) there's a lot of russian hassy knock-offs out there as well...
Just looking at that big mirror box, and thinking "wow, you could get a motor in there..."