The closest focussing distance is one meter, therefore it will not be suitable for very close shooting. Its 80mm lens is very sharp, it has lovely blur in out-of-focus area. The camera has not had any problems since. Thankfully, these problems were quickly and inexpensively fixed by most excellent camera repair specialist in London Graham Playford. This second camera, after some time of use, needed a rangefinder adjustment for perfect focussing (I learned that for Mamiya 7s it should be done once in a while!) as well as it had a film curtain handle stuck and so I couldn’t take the lens off. I sold it back to the camera shop where I bought it and got another Mamiya 7. My first Mamiya 7, which I purchased five years ago, had light meter compensation dial stuck as well as after a couple of months of use it developed shutter firing problems - shutter speed would be wrong or sometimes it did not fire at all. The camera body is not very sturdy or weather proof therefore it is, I think, a good practice not to bang it or get it soaked in rain. But I usually wear glasses and have absolutely no problem seeing it. Seeing light meter reading at the bottom of the rangefinder might take a couple of hours to get used to.
Mamiya 7 ii weight how to#
The light meter, once you know how to interpret it - where to point or how to compensate, helps to easily achieve very accurate exposure. The shutter is quiet and does not create camera vibration, therefore very sharp image can be achieved even when shooting handheld at lower shutter speeds, like 1/30th or 1/15th of a second. Quick accurate focusing is easy even in low light (sometimes it can be useful to rotate the camera to vertical or horizontal position, depends what works best, when focusing in very low contrast or visually very “busy” scenes e.g. Once you know how to take incident light reading and about shutter speed and aperture relationship in regard to exposure - it is a joy to use. Mamiya 7 with its 80mm lens is a truly wonderful medium format camera. I do wish it had an electronic remote release. I use a cable release 90% of the time so shutter release is reasonable. Changing film on tripod requires the Mamiya QR adapter, which I don't have so just have to unmount/reload/mount for now. Battery life seems good but I always make sure the camera is switched off after use. The 150mm seems an odd focal length for me. I will probably get the 210 & just learn how to shoot with it. I want to get either the 50 or 43mm WA, but as mentioned, very expensive, even on Ebay. Even though it's a film camera, still protective of it in the elements as it does have electronics. I do wish you could switch film types, but that just requires a different shooting strategy, maybe a second body. I do mostly landscape, so still working on using filters. I rented a body & lens and tried out some B&W to see what was possible. After realizing I wasn't getting any younger, a lighter camera was the obvious choice. Very nice tools but heavy to carry much, making hiking brutal. After getting into MF cameras, I tried Mamiya RZ67 and Pentax 67 kits.