Mamiya RZ67 Pro II - which lenses ?

I've just bought myself a clean condition Mamiya RZ67 Pro II with waste level finder and 120 film back. I'm aiming to eventually buy three lenses, I mainly shoot landscape photography and would like to try some portrait photography at some stage etc....

So which RZ lenses would youse experienced RZ67 shooters advise me to buy please? I've heard great things about the RZ 110mm f/2.8 as a standard lens and hope to possibly go for that first.

Any advice - experience - knowledge greatly appreciated.


Best wishes;
Peter
Central Scotland

I would love to get my hands on a 110 2.8 but for landscapes, I am much more interested in a 50mm at the moment. I shoot with the 150mm and 90mm, and I can only imagine carrying 1 MAYBE 2 more lenses while I hike around. The 150mm has never failed me, when I have the luxury of space. The 90mm is a great walk around, all purpose, but you have to approach your subject. Remember the perspective is much different given the size of the negatives. I think it works out to about half, so if you get a 110, its more like the 50mm on a 35mm, but who the hell shoots that stuff anyway?

How about 65mm, 90mm, and 127mm? These lenses tend to be relatively common and inexpensive, and they are a nice nearly-geometric progression of focal lengths.

An alternative would be 50mm, 90mm, and 180mm. Each step in this progression is approximately double in focal length.

I recently bought an RB67 pro S camera, and I have collected a lot of lenses: 50mm, 65mm, 90mm, 127mm, 180mm, 250mm, and 360mm. There aren't many situations that would be out of range of this collection, and the steps between the lenses are relatively fine, so one could get nice framing with relatively little cropping of the image, especially if one were to "zoom with the feet" a little bit.

The RB lenses are relatively inexpensive. I suspect the same would be true for the RZ lenses, though perhaps not quite as much of a bargain as the RB lenses.

For lenses where there's a floating-element version (50, 65, 140) you must buy the floating version! Especially true of the 50; IMHO the non-ULD 50 is visibly softer than shooting a good 24mm on 35mm film.

The 110/2.8 is indeed good, will give you the shallowest DOF and better-than-average bokeh, but note that trying to nail the focus wide open is really difficult if your subject is alive. If you're shooting landscape, I question the need for a huge aperture though, and you might be better served by some others. The 110 is also the smallest and lightest RZ lens, it's super-easy to carry all day.

If you want really-sharp, my suggestions are the 50 ULD or 65 M-LA, 140 M-LA (macro) and any of the APO teles.

Personally, I have the 37 fish, 65 M-LA, 110/2.8W, 140 M-LA and 250APO. I've previously owned and sold the non-ULD 50 and the 180/4.5. As above if you want a 50, you really want the ULD. The 180/4.5 is incredibly good value for money in a short tele and I sold mine only because I got the 250APO which is better in a big print.

I used to own an RZ and the 110 was my most used lens and my favorite. Like polyglot says it's the smallest and lightest lens so it's not bad walking around with it on the camera if you use the waist level finder and the "L" grip. The 180 makes an excellent portrait lens and the 50 ULD is fantastic for a wide angle. Those are the three lenses that I owned.

If you have not bought the RZ "L" grip yet then I highly recommend it to you. It makes the camera so much more manageable.

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