Mamiya 7ii - First Roll
I consider myself to be a pretty lazy photographer. What I mean to say is, my compositions are rarely too well thought out. I see something interesting, I point my camera at it with little regard for what else is in or out of frame, snap a photo and continue on my way. Shooting with my Leica M2 suits this way of working since the framelines are only an approximation of what will be in frame vs the more specific SLR experience which somehow makes me overthink each photo.
‘Do I want that bin/ discarded cup/ piece of unidentifiable matter in the photo' or not?’ My brain ums and arrs over these critical decisions..
Not an issue I find with a rangefinder, the 35mm framelines almost fill the viewfinder so it kind of just becomes an exercise in aiming at the subject and not thinking about it too much. This way of shooting often results in some nice surprises when the scans come back too which is inevitably where I make a more concentrated effort to fine tune a composition.
‘Oh yeah that discarded cup just elevated this photo from mildly shite to something my old A-Level photography lecturer might have commented on as being ’I think I see what you were trying to do here Laurence but..’
I digress.
It's safe to say I’m a rangefinder convert and recently I’ve been getting that feeling. You know the one I mean.
The one that is like a little whisper in your ear telling you that there’s a piece of equipment missing from your already unnecessarily large collection. This time it was different though, naturally. This time I could justify the new purchase 100% and it didn’t matter that I would have to auction off several organs to get it (if anyone is in need of a kidney I’m still open to offers). What I wanted was the experience of shooting my Leica but on a larger negative. Shooting with a rangefinder suits me and I therefore couldn’t see myself buying a medium format SLR, sure there’s some great options out there but I knew I wouldn’t be totally happy with it. I also wanted a reliable built in light meter because aside from being shit at metering manually, we also have a small person in our lives now who isn’t a big fan of standing (or in her case sitting) still for prolonged periods of time while I contemplate how I should expose a scene. I knew I wanted it to shoot 6x7 because I almost always crop my photos to 4x5 aspect ratio, there’s something nice about the slightly square rectangle proportions if you know what I mean. Finally and possibly the deciding factor was that I wanted it to be as lightweight and compact as possible, a tall order for a medium format camera but typically rangefinders are a fair bit smaller than their SLR equivalents.
So where does that leave us? I guess in the back of my mind I knew the camera I was after but I knew (from looking repeatedly) that they were super expensive in good condition and even the ropey looking examples were going for silly money. It was time to play the waiting game which required patience and I’m sure I’m not alone in saying this is not a trait I possess much of. Fortunately the right camera came up not too long into the future..
Yeah it was of course a Mamiya 7, well priced and from a shop rather than an eBay seller too so it came with a 6 month warranty which gives a little piece of mind when buying a bit of 90’s technology. It was also a later ‘7ii’ model which was a bonus as I was only really looking for the original ‘7’ and whilst the differences between them are negligible, the newer the better I guess. The lens is the 80mm f4 which on reflection is the better choice for me despite the 65mm being closer to the 35mm field of view I’m used to. Not only is the 80mm more compact, I think the slightly more ‘zoomed in’ focal length will be more versatile, maybe for the occasional portrait if I can get Poppy to sit still long enough.
Like any respectable film photographer I had already exhausted every article/ video/ theatre production about the Mamiya 7 so when it arrived I was pretty surprised at how different it felt in hand to what I was expecting. I’d read online that it felt plasticky and somewhat fragile which had me a bit worried about its longevity, but the outside has a kind of tacky rubber coating which makes it nice and grippy while the body itself has a reassuring weightiness to it. Needless to say I’m no longer concerned. Obviously as a product of the very early 2000’s I imagine the electronics will fail before anything mechanical but lets just try and push that to the back of our minds..sweats profusely
The rangefinder is nice and bright, not quite as good as the M2 but as good as it needs to be. The 7ii has a polarised viewfinder which helps keeps the focusing patch visible in bright sunlight too which is pretty snazzy. Something that struck me while focusing is how short the throw between near and infinity, feels like around 90 degrees which is close enough to the Voigtlander Skopar I have on the M2 and makes focusing super quick.
I’ve read some bits and pieces about the lightmeter on the 7ii and from what I can tell it’s more or less a spot meter. The spot is about the size of the rangefinder patch and sits just below the centre of the viewfinder. A lot of older cameras used centre weighted metering which would be great for the majority of everyday shooting. The 7ii’s meter takes this one step further with a much smaller area that is metered however this makes it really easy to just pick out a specific area and get a reading. For the test roll I shot the camera on AEL mode, pointed the meter at the darkest area that was closest to middle grey and then recomposed. From the scans it looks to be a pretty foolproof method although I guess some situations might call for a different approach.
Anyway, tech talk over..
This time of year doesn’t lend itself to getting out and taking lots of photos, especially since there only seems to be any light for a short period during the middle of the day when I’m stuck inside working. Our morning walks are the main opportunity to get out with the camera but we’ve done a similar route almost everyday for about a year so yeah I kind of struggle to find anything new to photograph. Nevertheless, here are a few from the roll which granted aren’t terribly exciting (except for you of course Pops) but it was still great to give the Mamiya a quick test and see what it can do. All of these were shot on Portra 400, rated at box speed.
So yeah, first impressions are good. Really good. The Mamiya is exactly what I wanted and the quality of the images is fantastic while the field of view with the 80mm lens looks to be spot on. Take it Easy Lab did a great job on these scans, definitely check them out if you need your film developed. I’ve got a lot of images planned in my head for when time allows but until then I’m excited to share more photos taken around our local area, who knows, I might even venture outside of Norfolk one of these days!
Larry