Mamiya 7 panoramas

[Snapper]

I've got a panoramic kit for my Mamiya 7II that came with the camera when I first bought it. I finally got around to using it last week - I borrowed a 43mm lens and loaded some 35mm panf+, making sure I revolvd the plate to the 135 setting. The resulting pictures were stunning, but the image quality was poor, really unsharp. I tried again with the 80mm lens and fp4+ but was still disappointed with the sharpness when enlarged on just 10x8 paper, compared with what I usually get using 120 film.

Has anyone else had this experience, or am i doing something wrong?

 

[L Gebhardt]

I've got a panoramic kit for my Mamiya 7II that came with the camera when I first bought it. I finally got around to using it last week - I borrowed a 43mm lens and loaded some 35mm panf+, making sure I revolvd the plate to the 135 setting. The resulting pictures were stunning, but the image quality was poor, really unsharp. I tried again with the 80mm lens and fp4+ but was still disappointed with the sharpness when enlarged on just 10x8 paper, compared with what I usually get using 120 film.

Has anyone else had this experience, or am i doing something wrong?

I don't have the pano adapter for mine, but if you crop the 120 down to the same size is it sharp? I assume so, so your are doing something wrong, or the adapter is defective.

 

[colrehogan]

It's been a while since I used mine but I never really had any problems using it. When I used Kodak IR film, I taped a piece of 120 backing paper over the plate and had no problems at all. Was the film fed properly over the mask and did you push the take up spool thing (sorry, don't recall what it's called at the moment) back onto the film (Not just letting the door close it)?

 

[Loose Gravel]

As I just got an Xpan, I did research on this format and read that the this adapter had this problem. Don't remember where I read that. 35mm film is pretty stiff compared to 120. Maybe if you stop down more. Are the images sharp somewhere?

 

[colivet]

I've got a panoramic kit for my Mamiya 7II that came with the camera when I first bought it. I finally got around to using it last week - I borrowed a 43mm lens and loaded some 35mm panf+, making sure I revolvd the plate to the 135 setting. The resulting pictures were stunning, but the image quality was poor, really unsharp. I tried again with the 80mm lens and fp4+ but was still disappointed with the sharpness when enlarged on just 10x8 paper, compared with what I usually get using 120 film.

Has anyone else had this experience, or am i doing something wrong?

I read somewhere about this problems with the Mamiya 7 with panoramic insert. Maybe it was at the Mamiya forum, but I am not sure.
My guess is that the film is not sitting flat on the film plane. Lenses are more than sharp, that should not be the problem.

 

[Aggie]

I was too cheap to lay out the extra for the pano kit. I just crop my 120 when I want a panorama look.

 

[David Henderson]

To the original poster- I take it that you have re-set the pressure plate to 220/135 and aren't just using the 120 setting? If so then it seems to me that the film isn't lying correctly and thats probably because the adapter isn't seating quite right.

Frankly I don't know why Mamiya - or users- bother with this faffy and inconvenient adapter. Mine went back after a week when it kept causing the back of the camera to spring open mid-roll ( which has never ever happened with 120/220). You get no compositional advantage and lose the ability to switch from 67 to panoramic on a frame by frame basis. I can get 18 -in fact 20- panoramics on a roll by using 220 film and by using roll-film I'm not limited to 24mm max height.

 

[Snapper]

This is what I was thinking - the film is not lying flat. I'm using f/22 and a tripod, so I should be getting max depth of field.

I realise I can just crop in the darkroom, but I liked the effect of printing a big rebate and showing it as a true 'panorama' rather than just a cropped 120 image. Plus you get the extra 6 frames on a roll. If I get around to subscribing I'll post the images.

I'll give it one more go - if it doesn't work out, expect to see a Mamiya 7 panoramic kit on ebay soon. Maybe I'll put the money towards the Mamiya 7 polariser filter kit - has anyone used these and is there a big advantage over using a straight screw-in filter? Is it worth the £100+ price tag?

 

[grahamp]

Take a strip of fogged and developed 35mm film, then make a lith copy. This will give you a mask with a clear area and rebate to print through. You would have to print down the image in the rebate for a true effect, of course.

The edge codes would be a total lie, naturally

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

If you crop from 6x7, though, you aren't limited to the center of the frame, so it's like having front rise/fall in the horizontal position or shift in the vertical position. Unless there is some film you just have to use that is only available in 35mm, the pseudo-view camera possibilities you get by cropping give you much more flexibility in 120 than using a 35mm pano adapter.