I'm a film and digital photographer living in Costa Rica. I mostly photograph events, such as concerts, and lifestyle.
My other passion is computer technology, mostly in the system administration area and little in the software programming area.
Event and lifestyle photography on film and digital
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Mamiya RZ67 Pro II
My latest camera purchase was a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II that I got through eBay. After I had purchased the Kiev 88CM I fell in love with waist level viewfinders and big ground glass.
Before purchasing the Mamiya RZ67 Pro II, I did a bit of research on this camera and other options I had, specially since there are two versions of the RZ67. I've always wanted the Nikon F5 but I have a hate/love relationship with 35mm so I decided that I would keep with medium format for this purchase.
One of the features that I love about the RZ67 camera is the bellows focusing system, it's simply amazing and quite useful, and I had read in several places that with the bellows every lens would be able to do macro but after using it I found that it's not really the case, well at least to what I find that macro should be. A bit disappointed on that part or maybe it's just me not knowing how to use it well, either way I'm not that into macro photography anyways.Because this camera uses a bellows system for focusing, instead of moving a ring on the lens there is a knob on each side of the camera that are used to focus by moving the lens further or closer to the body.
Like the Kiev 88CM, this camera has a knob on one side where the shutter speed is set, unlike the Kiev 88CM this knob only has that function. The fastest shutter speed on this camera is 1/400th of a second and that's due to the fact that the Mamiya RZ67 uses leaf shutters, meaning that the shutter is on the lens and not on the body, this is another feature I loved about this camera simply because it can sync with the flash at all speeds and it's quite cool if you ask me.The difference between the Mamiya RZ67 Pro and Pro II is that the Pro II has half step shutter speeds and also a fine focusing knob.
This one came as a surprise really, the Kiev 88CM also has a small magnifier that is used to assist in focusing, the difference with that one and the one on the RZ67 is that the RZ67's magnifier allows you to view the whole image in the ground glass so no need to close it after you have focused the scene to compose the shot. This also prevents ambient light from hitting the ground glass and making it difficult to see the image.
Everything I read mentioned that this was a heavy and big camera but that was also said about the Kiev 88CM so I didn't expect it to be incredibly heavy and big but what a surprise...this camera is bigger and heavier than the Kiev 88CM, in fact it makes the Kiev 88CM look like a toy. This camera wasn't made to be used handheld and one of the reasons for this is the fact that the focusing system that is used shifts the center of gravity depending on how far out the lens is and how heavy the lens is thus making it difficult to hand hold the camera and try to focus and then shoot. There's a L grip that was made for this camera which assists on hand holding the camera...sadly I don't have one.I've managed to shoot with it handheld though it's not easy.
This camera is a medium format film camera, though digital backs exist for it, thus it uses 120 and 220 film, in this case I only have a 120 back. The difference with the Kiev 88CM is that the frame size of this camera is 6x7 instead of 6x6. Here are a few samples that came out of the first roll I ran through this camera
That is the first photo I took with the camera on a tripod of course. I used Kodak Portra 400.
Since the RZ67 has a revolving back, meaning with a turn of the back I can shoot horizontal or vertical photos
I really like how sharp the photos come out and having a negative this size renders big photos when scanned.
The above photo was taken in color, Kodak Portra 400, but was converted to B&W in post as it looks way better this way.-LMLeave a Comment
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Luis Murillo's Posterous
I'm a film and digital photographer living in Costa Rica. I mostly photograph events, such as concerts, and lifestyle.
Comments 6 Comments
Also, I just want to confirm - the fastest shutter speed is 1/400th? Does this mean there would be problems shooting with the 110mm at 2.8 on a really sunny day?
Thanks,
Jade
The shutter speed does limit in that area, the leaf shutters aren't exactly made for fast speeds and this camera was oroiginally designed for studio use, but a ND filter would be useful in that sense or a lower ISO film.
On a different not your stuff looks great. You've got some awesome images on here.