1st test roll of Mamiya 6MF

[Rich Silfver]

I'm continuing to 'borrow' my wife's Mamiya 6MF as she is too busy with work these weeks

Put a few test rolls through the camera.
Shot them all using aperture priority and tried various scenes to check out how well the meter would work (as I've heard various comments about the accuracy of the meter not being what it should be..).

Exposure
Got the first rolls back yesterday...and was amazed... every single shot was perfectly exposed - and in some really tough lighting situations !

Shot one slide roll (Astia 100F) and one b&w (T-Max 100) - slower speed films as it was really bright out there.

Handheld I was getting about 125th at f/8 on most shots.

Sharpness
The slides are pin-sharp (there is one taken of a beach area with dogs running in the water - about 200 feet away - and when looking through the loupe the details are just amazing).

Handholding / Focusing
I also really wanted to see how the camere would do with 'action photography' and how it would handle handheld as I am used to taking MF photos almost exclusively on a tripod.
So I used one of my favorite spots for that - Fort Funston outstide of San Francisco where you can catch some hanggliders almost every weekend.

As all, like the one attached here as an example, were hand held
and contained fast moving objects, there wasn't absolute sharpness but in the example attached I can see the rubber band in the guys socks on the original.

The focusing was very easy, the viewfinder is bright and it is very fast and easy to focus even on moving objects (these hanggliders come in fast...).

Conclusion
This one squeaks a bit and have some other quirks that we'll fix but...I found the camera to be absolutely amazing to work with and the results are stunning on lightbox and print!

As I headed out the next day to take some early (6:30am) sunrise photos I hesitated as I picked up the 'blad... But in the end went with the old Swede as I knew I was going to be using a tripod anyway and work slowly (and I do enjoy the larger waistlevel finder).

BUT - for 'walking around shots' I have a hard time imagining a better camera in the 6x6 arena that can deliver the same sharpness, excellent built in metering, easy of focusing and speed of use.

Two thumbs up !!

 

[back alley]

i knew you'd like it!

 

[znapschatz]

Re: 1st test roll of Mamiya 6MF

Two thumbs up !! [/B][/QUOTE]

What He Said, plus this:

Shortly after acquiring my Mamiya 6 outfit, I took it for a test drive, comparing the lenses with those of several other 6X6 well proven cameras of my acquaintance; 2 Hasselblad C’s (1 borrowed) and 2 Rolleiflex TLRs, one lensed with an f3.5 Planar and the other an f3.5 Xenar, ignoring that the 'blad “normal” lenses were 80 mm and the others 75 mm. I put up the Mamiya 150 mm v. the Hassy Sonnar, but didn’t test the Mamiya 50 mm at that time because I had no other WA lenses.

The test subject was a highly detailed view of downtown Columbus from a bridge. This allowed the lenses to be set at infinity, eliminating the possibility of focussing errors. I then exposed 3 frames each from f4 to 11 on Provia color transparency and Ilford Pan F b&w films and after processing, examined each neg with 10X and 30X magnifiers.

At 10X, results were pretty much as as expected. The Rollei Xenar was a touch soft at f4, centrally sharp by f5.6 and sharp edge to edge by f8-11, typical Tessar-type lens performance. All the others were centrally sharp at f4, with the Hasselblad Planar edges cleaning up by f5.6 and the Rollei Planar by f8. This, too, is typical for their types and what I was accustomed to seeing. The Mamiya was sharp edge to edge from f4 on down. At f11, all cameras produced virtually identical results. I would use any of these lenses with confidence for any enlargement requirements.

Under 30X magnification, the color tsp’s looked much as they did at 10X, only larger. Provia is not the sharpest slide film available, but the only one I use, so I don’t really care how the lenses behave with others, and the test can be applied to any color neg film to predict sharpness with them. Fine grain b& w, however, is capable of resolving much finer detail than possible with most color films, and that’s where the test got interesting.

At maximum aperture, the Mamiya 75mm resolved detail that was pure mush in the other negs. This was somewhat surprising because I read somewhere that this particular lens design was a bit deficient wide open (to what, I can't imagine). By f5.6 it was showing details that were barely visible to the unaided eye, and that across the whole field. The other lenses, regarded as among the world's best, almost matched this quality, but not quite and only by f11. Simply put, it was the best performance in a medium format lens I had ever seen. Photographs taken with this lens could be enlarged to 5 feet, limited only by the film used. Was I impressed? Uh huh.

I'll post about the 150 mm lens comparisons another time.

Of course, sharpness is not the only measure of lens quality. Also, since I have never enlarged b&w beyond 16X20, I doubt for me there would be much practical application for this astounding performance. OTOH, who knows? Now that I know what is possible, perhaps I can find some application. In any case, I thought maybe my fellow Sixers might be interested.

 

[back alley]

thanks for the info zsnaps.
you obviously have way more patience than i do.

i've never been much of a detail guy, while i believe i have a basic understanding of most things photographic, i would be hard pressed to pass on that info in a coherent way.

i mostly like looking at the pictures.

joe