Medium Format Film - Question

[rxmd]

I would use the medium format camera with slower film, and the 35mm camera for low-light shots.

I wish you good luck keeping the setup to one lens. You just started to get into the medium format system with the best price/performance ratio on lenses, by far!

If you have a 6C, it might come either with a Volna 80/f2.8 or a Vega 90/f2.8, both are excellent lenses. But if you can be tempted, at least think about looking at one or more of the following:

• Vega 120/f2.8 (an excellent short portrait tele, very compact - fits in any camera bag)
• Zeiss Flektogon 50/f4. This is a very nice wideangle, a bit slow but of excellent quality. Wideangles look unique on the square format, a visual impression that looks quite different from 35mm without a lot of cropping:
  
  
  
  
• Zeiss Sonnar 180/f2.8. A huge lens, but the best portrait lens I've ever had the pride to hold in my hands, with amazing possibilities to work with depth of field. Here's two shots from mine:
  
  
  
  
  

With a bit of luck you can get all three for under $150. 🙂

The nice thing about medium format is that GAS is pretty harmless. Unlike 35mm, and especially unlike rangefinders, having more than one lens doesn't distract you from taking pictures, because the lenses are so big that you usually can't take more than one or two. I normally walk about with two, either the 90/50 or the 180/50 combination, and with both combinations it's an easy choice.

Philipp

 

[kuzano]

Welcome to MF country...

Welcome to MF country...

Well, I know you like the challenge of FSU cameras, but the ideal, Lightweight, rangefinder, 60mm lens 645 is the Fuji GS645S Professional. Plastic over steel frame, fixed lens, quiet shutter with no mirror slap, bright viewfinder, crash bar on the lens, etc, etc, etc...

Now, one other thing to look for is to explore every conceivable option for lens variety that will work. For instance, all the FSU lenses have adaptors to mate them to japanese and US camera's. When I shot a lot of Mamiya and Bronica, there were adaptors that allowed use of FSU lenses. I would look for an adaptor that will mount Mamiya to your Kiev. If you can find that, then I can tell you that Mamiya has a 1.9f lens that fits the M645 models, up to and including the Super and Pro. If I recall, the focal length is 75 or 80mm. If Mamiya lenses would fit your Kiev, there is a vast supply, at reasonable prices, of tack sharp lenses. I even have a leaf shutter 75 for a Mamiya, that resolves the problem of flash sync using focal plane as is normal with the Mamiya M645 family of bodies.

That 1.9 fast lens would give you a real leg up on the low light. The 1.9 is a bit harder to find, but I have seen them come up on eBay with more frequency than one might think.

Also, the 645 negative is 2.7 larger in area than the 35mm frame, so enlarging does not show grain nearly as soon as the 35mm's you are used to.

I would first exhaust all the possibilities of faster lenses than you currently think available for your new Kiev

 

[rxmd]

Mamiya 645 lenses aren't adaptable to the Kiev because of lens register. Kiev lenses are adaptable to the Mamiya 645, but not the other way round.

There are no medium format lenses faster than f2.8 for the Pentacon Six mount, and AFAIK there are none either that will be adaptable to it (well, unless you are prepared to do very serious surgery to a Hasselblad 110/2 or something like that).

 

[ruben]

Hi Philipp,
You have an interesting way to support the "keep it simple".

But one of my ideas is that since the film size is bigger, I can avoid the use of long lenses via cropping.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[rxmd]

Hi Philipp,
You have an interesting way to support the "keep it simple".

🙂

I currently have three medium format lenses (50, 90, 180). As I said, it's easy to choose between these because they are very different, and because it's usually impossible to take more than two. And even those two will be heavy. 🙂 Medium format is a lot more about making conscious choices. I like it.

I used to have a lot more medium format stuff, but I gave everything away that I wasn't using. The last thing I gave away was two 65/f3.5s, an old Mir-3 from the 1970s and a Mir-36B. I gave one of them to a good friend who produced outstanding pictures with it until he dropped it. Now I've given him the other; I thought it was better to have him take good pictures with it than to have it gather dust in my cupboard. I guess that is a somewhat more legitimate way of keeping it simple! 😉

Cropping works nicely. I used to crop a lot before I got the Sonnar (which cost me 30 EUR or so, so I could afford it). Cropping has the disadvantage that you can't get any wider. And the Sonnar is simply beautiful. You can take big tele pictures and then crop from those! 😉 The limitation of cropping is making big prints, however. For 8x10 or so you will already be stretching it. For me medium format is about slower, more conscious photography, and about getting great tonality in the end. Said friend with the 65 has now bought a 5x7 Plaubel, and I am looking forward to trying that out as well one day.

Philipp

 

[ruben]

You don't want to be cropping too much Ruben. MF lenses are not as sharp as 35mm.

(I don't want to upset any MF guys, but I mean they calculate CoC differently and other technical stuff.)


Pitxu.

Let's say avoiding the use of the wonderfull Vega 120mm (80mm in 135 film).

I bite: what is CoC ? Any proxy of AinE ?

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[rxmd]

I guess when your prints are big enough that you can see the difference, and when you then care enough for the sharpness difference, you will be ready to take another lens with you for those tele shots! 😉

 

[ruben]

I guess when your prints are big enough that you can see the difference, and when you then care enough for the sharpness difference, you will be ready to take another lens with you for those tele shots! 😉

My friend Philip, please don't...

I built a full MF system out of the c330, up to the last detail, just for having it sleeping most of its life.

My gas instinct is to have the full thing. But I am extremely happy with my Kiev rfs, and this Kiev 645 is mostly to liquidate a lot of excess MF film left by my C-330s.

Mercy, please.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[rxmd]

OK, OK... Just take a lot of pictures with it, will you? 🙂

Philipp

 

[ruben]

I built a full MF system out of the c330, up to the last detail, just for having it sleeping most of its life.

My gas instinct is to have the full thing. But I am extremely happy with my Kiev rfs, and this Kiev 645 is mostly to liquidate a lot of excess MF film left by my C-330s.......

Cheers,
Ruben

It seems to me that the Kiev 60 has relatively great ergonomics, just take out that monster TTL finder.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[ruben]

Hereby a link showing three great pictures made with the standard Vega 12 i am going to get:

http://bleuimages.wordpress.com/category/photography/vega-12b-90-f28/

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[rxmd]

The Vega 90/f2.8 is a great lens. Compact, nice bokeh, and focuses down to 60 cm.

Philipp