Mamiya TLR lenses:how good are they?

[chip j]

I like the Mamiya TLR because it has less parallax than the Mamiya 6 I used to have, and it looks SO intelligent, just like 35mm rangefinders.

 

[George Collier]

I used a C33 for years in the 70's, with the 80 (or 75, whatever that range was) and the 135, always on tripod, and liked the results. But eventually I moved to Rollei's because of something I'll call a combination of sharpness and contrast that I kept seeing as better with the Rollei lenses. I often wondered, though, whether it was better optics in the Rollei, or whether the mounting and changing mechanism of the Mamiya (which I always considered to be somewhat tinker toy) resulted in not quite accurate position of the lens to film, or slight differences in the focusing vs the shooting.

 

[Marc B.]

...I often wondered, though, whether it was better optics in the Rollei, or whether the mounting and changing mechanism of the Mamiya (which I always considered to be somewhat tinker toy) resulted in not quite accurate position of the lens to film, or slight differences in the focusing vs the shooting...

Fair enough.
This also brings up another good point, though...the importance of shooting a test roll of film, or two.
Ensuring that the lens focus actually matches what you see in the viewfinder or WLF focusing screen.

Taping the front page of a newspaper to a wall works well for me. Bracket some focusing shots,
much like bracketing for exposure.
These 'focus bracketing' shots will show whether your TLR 'taking lens,' is in tune with the 'viewing lens.'

Marc

 

[viridari]

Ken Rockwell said

You lost me there.

 

[viridari]

I'm pretty happy with my Mamiya C330 and the lens that is on there about 99% of the time is the Mamiya-Sekor 80mm/f2.8


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