I've been using it for a few weeks, mostly just testing, yesterday for a portrait shoot, 3 portraits and some reportage type stuff for which the A75 was overkill but I did it to see how well or not well it handled it.
Mamiya so far quite reliable apart from a bizarre happening during testing a few days ago when I was shooting in manual mode and it seemed to automatically switch from 1/60 of a second to 15seconds! Problem seemed to go away after a reboot.
Focus is accurate... when it does it. Tends to hunt quite a lot and its hard to see exactly what I'm focusing on. This is nothing like a Canon SLR!
I found it hard to tell if I was getting focus on the sitters eyes or nose. My focus hits were not great on the portraits, as a result I tended to AF, then set to manual and shoot. This had, unsurprisingly, variable results.
On the reportage material I found that even on the tripod I was getting some soft shots. At 400 ASA the files are a bit noisy but usuable. But even so, with available light and lenses limited to f2.8 (80mm AF) or 3.5 (150mm AF) this felt clunky and in future I'll continue to shoot this material with a Canon SLR.
On another shoot I was using the Mamiya with a 35mm manual and this was fine. However the manual 150mm I had didn't focus correctly. Even when focussed with the focus assist, there was a discrepancy between a sharp image in the viewfinder and the final file. Quite bizarre. I decided to get the 150mm AF lens after this.
When you hit the focus on the nose the resulting files are utterly amazing. Its the nearest thing to point and shoot 5x4. Someone, sometime is going to find a way to use this to do something quite original. I'm sure it offers some new creative possibilities, particular for art photography where display sizes are large and quality is important.
Very pleased with the AFD II, I consider the shortcomings to be mine rather than Mamiya's. Its just a tool in the end, and its the workman that has to drive the tool and not the other way round.
Has anyone used the Mamiya/Aptus 75 combo ?
How is reliability, focus, backfocus etc ?
Edmund
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