Finally - personal announcement...

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

After living with a Mamiya Press for about 20+ years yesterday we parted.
It was all a conspiration by my right hip which badly suffers arthrosis and every time complains when carrying that heavy backback.

I gave the whole kit with the complete lens line, several bodies, extension tubes and lots of stuff to a photo dealer in exchange for a Mamiya 7 II with 80 mm and 150 mm lens. It was a tough decision to take, since after opening basically every lens, disassembling, cleaning and reassembling all the shutters there was so much heart-blood in it I first thought I'd die parting - but now I feel relieved.

Bye bye Mamiya Press, Super 23, and the lenses 50, 65, 75, 90, 100 (f3.5), 100 (f2.8), 127, 150, 250 mm and, and and.

**big sigh**

Welcome Mamiya 7 II !

And now for something completely different ...


Cheers
~Chris


P.S.: If anyone has a 43 mm for the M7 to part with I'd be interested.

[Rob C]

I wish you both well!

If the body and lenses are in good condition, you should do very well with the outfit.

Rob C

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Actually I am sure I will miss the 100 mm F 2.8 lens.
I think I'll stay with Portra 400 for a while with this camera, since the lenses are 4.0 and 4.5.
Should work for B/W conversions too.
Today we had -11.5° C and the camera worked like a charm when I was on a walk for 3 hours .

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

If the digital revolution hadn't stolen my soul, I'd probably be using a Mamiya 7 II right now. My last film camera was a Mamiya 6 and it was a fantastic camera to use. I hope you find a good 43mm lens soon.

Do enjoy your new setup!

Eric

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

 Rob and Eric,

Thanks for the encouraging words!

This decision was growing for months and it was a tough one.
I saw I was going out less and less with the increase of the pain in the hip, and I had to do something about it.

That feeling Eric was describing ("taken my soul") was part of that conflict.
On the other hand Schewe sorta put it directly in another thread: "film sucks" he wrote, and partly he's right. Its a shitload of work and inconvenience and there are other technical aspects where film is clearly inferior.

Still: I was torn between the feeling of being a masochistic dinosaurus and I was watching information about the D3X, the Alphas, the Leica M9 on the one hand and on the other hand I had a strong feeling, that even with the superior D3X and Zeiss glass (for me a digital dream system) I'd be missing something. Then I got a Sinar 4x5 loaned by a local architecture photographer, who still does all his work in 4x5 inch film, scans with a flextight and he successfully makes his living  from that. After that very satisfying experience I felt the conflict even deeper.

When I compared images of my digital compacts (Canon G11 and a S95) and scans of my 120 films (at a small size which sortof equalizes the advantage of the bigger format) , I still had the impression giving up film would make me lose something aesthetically which I didn't want to give up but I can't exactly describe it.   However - if it is esoteric or a well founded impression - I decided to stick with film for a longer time. Maybe its just the way you take images, when there is no way to insta-check the result on the camera screen. No screen means the process requires much more and stricter anticipation and pre-visualization which might be what you gain (a specific sort of satisfaction) when not being spoiled by an on-camera screen. I can't exactly explain it, but I'd rather trust my guts here. But I still like my digital compacts, especially the S95 which lives in the pockets of my blue jeans most of the times.

On the long run I'm additionally looking for an Arca Swiss F metric kit, I'm already saving, but the 43 mm for the M7 is top priority and a printer is due as well.

Oops ... too many words - time to stop here ...

[Rob C]

You know, in retrospect, the best serious pix I ever made were on film; the most pleasing personal images have been, recently, on the blinking cellphone! The problems with the latter are obvious to anyone with such a device; the worst one being, apart from vision blackout in sunlight, that there's no RAW. The original file is 72ppi - what hope for reasonable prints when even the bare file has usually to be severely cropped to make up for the lack of seeing what's in the viewfinder! Okay for the web, in small images, but other than that...

I'd love to have had another 500C/CM body and lens kit, but that would have meant a dedicated film scanner and sadly, I'm not made of money. I still have an F3, but I think either my PS is failing or it's the CanoScan, but the two now won't speak to each other. All of which makes picking up a digital machine just so seductive.

However, one usually can't have everything.

Rob C

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Something I have seen in my own work over the past 60 years of photography is this: Every single time that I have given in to the siren lure of "better" technology (new fancier camera, built-in exposure meter, SLR, and eventually digital), the quality of the images I come up with has gone down for a considerable amount of time, until I finally learn to come to terms with the "new" system.

If I had a decent MF film scanner, I would get myself a Mamiya 7 II in a heartbeat. The only problem I had with my Mamiya 6 was leaving the lens cap on for the first two or three shots on a couple of rolls (after not using a rangefinder camera for some thirty years before that). 

On my 6, the wide angle lens was always my favorite, too, so I hope you find your 43 soon.

Eric

[feethea]

Christoph,

PM sent re the 43mm.

Barry

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I finally got my first shots with the Mamiya 7 developed. I had the 80 and 150 mm.
The 43 mm will arrive soonish from Barry and I'm looking forward to it a lot.

I am posting this, because these images were a try-out, especially for the purpose of street photography - I was using no tripod and took all shots hand-held.
I wanted to see whats possible within this constraints.
I'll post tripodded examples later, when I have some.

Images were scanned wet mounted  at 4000 ppi with a Nikon 9000.

There are 3 versions of each:

--> The original down sized for viewing here,
--> a 3 to 1 crop, which should represent the actual image size on print if one would print the original with 300 ppi and if your screen has 100 dpi
     for an uncropped 6*7 image this should be a print of about the size 24*28 inch
--> a 1 to 1 crop to see what is in the image at the last level.

#1:
(The 1:1 crop has some capture and output sharpening applied)

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

#2:

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

#3:

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I am impressed!

I found my 6 so easy to hand-hold that I hardly ever used a tripod with it.

I think you are going to enjoy your 7 a lot!

Eric

[michswiss]

I am so envious of you.  I had the chance to buy a complete 7II system, including the 43mm and two other lenses at the end of 2010 and I passed on it.  I've been kicking myself in the butt ever since.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

The system is not so hard to get and there are many M7iis and lenses around.
Yesterday I got the 43 mm from Barry and it looks excellent.
I still have to try it, but there is no reason to believe there might be any problem.
The whole deal and the communication with Barry were fun and very satisfying.
I'll try the lens coming weekend.
I just wonder if I should get the 65 mm too to fill the gap to the 80 mm, but most likely not in the near future.

[Rob C]

I am so envious of you.  I had the chance to buy a complete 7II system, including the 43mm and two other lenses at the end of 2010 and I passed on it.  I've been kicking myself in the butt ever since.

That, Jennifer, can be bad for your health; I'd think of something else, were I you!

Rob C

[mojojones]

Very nice! How did you run the T-Max? My used (looks new!) 7II kit (43, 65, 80, 150) just came in the mail this morning. Can't wait to get out and shoot with it. Think I'll run a roll of T-Max to really get a sense of the resolution of these lenses.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Very nice! How did you run the T-Max? My used (looks new!) 7II kit (43, 65, 80, 150) just came in the mail this morning. Can't wait to get out and shoot with it. Think I'll run a roll of T-Max to really get a sense of the resolution of these lenses.

Just natively at ISO 100. I let it develop in a lab (I was lazy) which uses Tetenal Ultrafin for development. The pronounced grain is a result of the contrast enhancement in post I think. And I didn't apply any denoising.

[mojojones]

Just natively at ISO 100. I let it develop in a lab (I was lazy) which uses Tetenal Ultrafin for development. The pronounced grain is a result of the contrast enhancement in post I think. And I didn't apply any denoising.

Thanks. Actually, the grain didn't look too bad... That's why I was asking. I'll probably end up running mine in HC-110 which usually results in pronounced granularity but great acutance and highlight separation.

Cheers...