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Mamiya 210mm f/8 for Mamiya 7 Test Review
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March 2010     More Mamiya Reviews

 

Introduction

Mamiya has to be kidding. This is an almost useless lens. Hats off to Mamiya for introducing it, but I'm not excited about it personally:

1.) It does not couple to the rangefinder. You have to guess at the distance and set that on the scale.

2.) Because focussing is by guess only, Mamiya limited it to f/8 so that hopefully at least something will be in focus.

3.) Close focus is 23 feet (7 m) , so forget it for headshots.

4.) You have to use one of those idiotic shoe-mounted finders for composition. Worse, I think you need to dial in windage and elevation to the finder, too!

5.) It costs $2,000!

To use this lens you will need to carry a separate optical rangefinder, just like people did in the 1940s, or a tape measure as we do in Hollywood movie production. You find the distance on the separate rangefinder (look in a hunting store or maybe Edmund Scientific for these, they have not been available for photography since the early 1960s) and then set the distance on the focus scale.

If you do that you probably can get great results for landscapes. Personally, I'll just crop from my perfectly functional and practical 150mm lens.

It is useless for aerial photography, where you could just set it to infinity, because of the slow f/8 speed. You need a faster lens to allow faster shutter speeds with slower film to stop the vibration from the aircraft.

 

Conclusion

Many t hanks to Mamiya for trying, but I'll pass and stick with my perfectly wonderful 150mm f/4.5.

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