Mamiya 6MF

Cycletouring is what I and my wife do on holidays. I've been on about 45 tours. The Mamiya 6 is THE best all round travel camera in that the lenses are stunning, it's a light system and compact and the body and 3 lenses will fit in a handlebar bag camera case (made by Agu). Lens changing is a bit tricky but you get the hang of it. The meter is best used in its simple to use lock mode. Focussing is not a problem, and I find little difficulty with the 150mm. People who do may need glasses. The build quality is very good and the battery life is extraordinary in my experience. I've used different kit in my years of bike touring, but the really great shots technically have been with this. It just blows any digital camera out of the water. I now use print film of any type and scan it on a Nikon 8000ed with glass film holder (essential for easy scanning).

Light, compact, good ergonomics apart from lens changing. Quiet. Extraordinary battery life.

Lens changing takes practice. Cannot do head and shoulder portraiture as close as you would like, though you can crop. Cannot focus very close.

Mamiya rb67. Fuji GA670iii. Kiev 88. Yashica 124g.

Have needed none whatsoever.

Mamiya 6: £1500 in total for body & 3 lenses second hand. The results from the camera and all the lenses have been superb. It is a great travel camera, dead reliable, fits my hand beautifully, robust, fairly versatile, quiet, reasonably unobtusive and easy to use. My favourite lenses are the 50mm and 75mm as they are pin sharp; if you had the choice of one all purpose lens I would take the 75mm as the results are so crisp and it is very cheap. Focussing is dead easy. The 150mm is more difficult to get good results from because of the small focussing area relative to the distance of the subject. The best results seem to be around F8 and F11 in terms of sharpness edge to edge for all the lenses but the fall off at smaller and larger apertures is not particularly noticeable. You do find that the amount of detail that is reproduced is amazing. I find that lens filters degrade the results substantially so I don't bother wit them now. Metering is so good that I don't bother with a hand held light meter but I do use mainly colour negative film (Fuji Superia 100, Fuji Reala 100, Fuji NPS and NPC 160) and it tends to have more exposure latitude than transparency films. I do use Fuji Velvia 50 with astounding results, but I find that a hand held meter does improve the results; either that or expose at 32ASA. I tend to find that the Kodak & Agfa films colour negative films don't give the same clarity of result (seems grainy and could down to the user) but Kodak 400VC does give some pleasing images, particularly on older people. I use Ilford for black & white. For flash, I use a Sunpack 3800 but now wish I had bought a more powerful Metz; the synch works at all speeds but I tend to use 1/30th or 1/60th unless it is for a fill in flash. Buy a Mamiya 6 and you will never regret it; it will be a classic like a Leica M series. I am keeping mine forever!

Fantastic travel camera for all the above reasons. Forget 35mm cameras unless you are doing sports or long distance nature photography, as you won't get the quality of results that you get with this baby. Read the other reviews as they cover the strengths very well. Having used the cameras below, this Mamiya is a great all purpose camera; there are other cameras that will do certain jobs much better but you will require more kit to achieve a better result.

As mentioned elsewhere, sub 3ft photograhy is impossible unless you get a close up lens attachemnt (only fits the 75mm lens and only operates between 12 and 18 inches, I believe). I would love to be able to head shot portraits but, alas, it is not possible. The most difficult lens to use is the 150mm as there is no magnification of the image to compensate for the increased distance of the subject; the minimum focus distance is 7 (yes, 7) FEET. But it is a cheap lens and well worth the money. The 50mm lens is expensive (around £500 secondhand) and it is very good. I would not want to be without it, but in terms of results and the value for money the 75 mm lens is astonishgly good.

Plaubel Makina 67, 80mm & 55mm Pentax 67 Hasselblad 500 series Leica M6 Nikon FA, 601, 801, F3 Canon EOS100 Minox 35ML Minox B Kodak Instamatic Kodak Brownie

Never used it but I am told that each lens should be fitted by Mamiya to a spcific body to get the best results; to date I have not bothered as I don't want another 2 bodies. Servicing doesn't seem too expensive, but to date it has not been required.

As this is one of the cameras I reviewed in print for the old _Camera & Darkroom_ magazine, I just wanted to mention that despite the scuttlebutt, there isn't a thing wrong with the Mamiya 6 meter. You just have to remember that it's a reflected light meter that gathers light from a window on the front of the top plate. Direct sunlight striking that area may throw the readings off. Simply shade that area with your hand. Your readings will be more than accurate enough for negative films, certainly (it's actually quite an excellent meter). Want to do this more or less automatically? Simply wear a cap or a hat. It protects the meter from sunlight when you have the camera up to your eye in 9 out of 10 situations.

I did some experiments for an article on sharpness with this camera. To date, the sharpest picture I've ever taken was with this camera, with the 150mm lens at f/6.3, very powerful studio flash of very short duration (1/10,000th sec. or less), and T-Max 100 film developed in Rodinal, printed on early Oriental RC. The picture was of a couple, and with a loupe on the print you could see the shapes of the lint specks on the woman's sweater and individual hairs of the man's stubble. Quite extraordinary. (Of course, sharpness alone doth not a good picture make.)

Many, many. Too many. www.37thframe.com.

This is a fine camera with the 3 lenses for those who want flexibility and travel-ability. I have two M6 bodies with the 3 lenses and love their operation. Sure the RF design doesn't allow for true portrait-sized photos, but one can still shoot portraits very well (not as good as a macro from a Hass). The 50mm and 75mm lenses are awesome and the 150mm is also a fine lens (but not used so much). The collapsible mount allows great storing for road-trips especially if you are going to lug it around for days on end in the bush. I am not so perturbed by the slowness of the lens. For the f3.5, f4 and f4.5 of the lens series, these are all fine with selection of subject and film speeds. Batteries (lithium) last along time too.

Awesome lenses. Fantastic collapsibility. Easy to focus (without focus adaptors etc). 150mm can be tricky to focus depending on lighting conditions. Very rugged design and no bigger than an old F4 Nikon SLR.

150mm lens can be difficult to focus depending on lighting. Not a portrait camera system (no real macro), but you can still do great portraitures. Shooting Infrared (HIE, one does get the reflection of the film backplane (especially the knob showing 120:220 rotation).

Mamiya 7

None required so far!

This is the world's most perfect camera system. It is better than the current Mamiya 7 system in terms of convenience, which is the whole point of these cameras.All three lenses collapse about 1.5" into the camera body, making a very compact camera. Heck, it weighs less and gets smaller than my Nikon. The Mamiya 7 cannot do this, and this is very, very important to me. This makes my medium format Mamiya more compact to carry than any of my Nikon SLRs.All three lenses are spectacular. The 50mm lens is one of the most perfect lenses I have ever used. It tests much better than the Zeiss Distagon for the Rolleiflex and the same as the Zeiss lens on the Hasselblad.The fact that these are rangefinder lenses and can be designed without having to work around the rear lens extension interfering with an SLR mirror allows the Mamiya 6's lenses to outdo the SLR systems. All three lenses have their own electronic leaf shutters providing speeds from 4 seconds to 1/500 and Bulb. Manual shutter control is at full stops while automatic control is stepless. Apertures of course may be set anywhere and the meter reads this, too. Electronic shutter control gives perfect accuracy at slower speeds and is limited only by shutter efficiency issues at the very top speeds. The shutters never require calibration. They are far more accurate than any mechanical shutter as on most Leica, Hasselblad and large format cameras. Flash sync on all lenses is at all speeds including 1/500, which is twice the speed of any Canon, Nikon or Leica.

See review!

Let me see... Long distance focusing!

Mamiya 7II, Hasselblad, Bronica...