Mamiya TLR System and where to go with it?

So I have a Mamiya C33 and a 80mm F2.8 lens black barrel with Seiko Shutter. It is my most used camera. I run a roll of film through it just about every week.
I want to move on to some of the other lenses for this system. But I'm really not sure what lenses to get.
Since I mainly shoot landscapes and Cityscapes I'm eying the 55mm. For portrait work I was either think of the 135mm or 180mm.
Is there a big difference between the chrome series and black series of lenses?

Examples of what I normally shoot:

I have chrome 105 and 180 mm lenses and I haven't found them lacking anywhere. Perfectly sharp enough. I also have black 65 mm and 55 mm - I use the former more, fine lenses but a good shade is a must with 55mm - or a hand holding a hat while on tripod. The widest aperture on 55 mm is only 4,5 vs. 3,5 on the 65 mm. Some times this does make a difference.

Keep an eye on filter size. 55 and 135 have same 46mm filter as the 80mm.
IMO the 65 FL is too close to 80.

I have the 55mm, 80mm, 135mm and 250mm. The 250mm has barely been used, only a handful of frames have been shot with it. I like the 135mm for portraits but I don't shoot many of them and I've always found the 80mm worked very well too and was more likely to be attached to my camera at the time.

I really like the 55mm. It gives a nice wide angle for landscapes but doesn't suffer from massive distortion. I also shoot a lot of landscapes and I found I had it attached to the camera more than the 80mm in the end.

I agree that a hood is a wise investment as it can be prone to flare.

I'd offer to sell you mine as I'm moving to an RZ67 system at the moment but I fear postage to the US would make it uneconomical.

Anyway the 55mm would be my next purchase if I were in your position.

I owned a 55mm for awhile -loved the perspective, did not like the sharpness flare etc. - BUT others seem to get good results with them. I suspect, given their age, there are good ones and not so good ones in the market place so shop very critically and don't buy if you can't test and return.

Malinku said:

So I have a Mamiya C33 and a 80mm F2.8 lens black barrel with Seiko Shutter. It is my most used camera. I run a roll of film through it just about every week.
I want to move on to some of the other lenses for this system. But I'm really not sure what lenses to get.
Since I mainly shoot landscapes and Cityscapes I'm eying the 55mm. For portrait work I was either think of the 135mm or 180mm.
Is there a big difference between the chrome series and black series of lenses?

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This has been asked many times in this forum, but here is what I usually answer:

Chrome vs Black:
Optical design is the same in all lenses except:
a. the 105mm chrome versus the 105mm black with an "S" in the model (i.e. "DS"). The latter is 5 element versus 4 element for the former.
b. the 180mm lens versus the 180mm black lens marked as "SUPER". The "super" is 5 elements and physically shorter. BTW i owned both models and the chrome 180mm was also a great lens, so don't feel bad if you don't get the "super" version.

Coatings: Only the latest latest 80mm and 105mm lenses were multicoated, but this does not matter at all. Single coating is very effective on those lenses, except the 55mm and the 65mm, which need use of the proper hood to prevent flare on some situations. I suspect that the coating on the older chrome lenses is better than the later black lenses...

Blue dot: Forget about the blue dot. It only meant an improved shutter mechanism but even the chrome shutters are reliable as tanks.

My review of lenses:
(I own all except the 250).
Also, note that i always use the full 6x6 negative (square format). In other words, i rarely crop it to 6x4.5 rectangle.

55mm: never used it too much because at f4.5 the corners are reputed not to be so good. When I used it, it was at about f11 and the image quality was good. It does feel wide, certainly wider than what it's 29mm equivalence (to 35mm) would make you think. Apparently it has no distortion.

65mm: Great all-around lens, perhaps the sharpest of all at f3.5, equivalent to about 35mm on 35mm-full-frame, useful for everything except of course typical portraits. Low or no distortion. Very sharp.

80mm: I never used this lens too much because this focal length is TOO common in 6x6 format. But it is very sharp.

105mm: Perhaps my favorite focal length for this system. Great all-around use and excellent for portraits. It's equivalent to about 58mm in 35mm terms. It is really great. The later 5-element version has supposedly smoother out-of-focus effects. I have the early 4-element (tessar) version and I do like the out of focus effects, though.

135mm: Bought it last month, not used it yet. Some people swear by it. Ergonomics are not good because it needs to bring forth the lens too much.

180mm: Very sharp. Chrome 180mm version has a bokeh that is to die for. The 180mm "Super" version also has good bokeh (i've not compared them yet) and is very sharp, even wide open.

250mm: Never owned one but it is f6.3 (very slow), heavy, and at such specifications it would only be useful with a tripod.

If forced to keep only one lens, it would be either the 65 or the 105.

If forced to keep only two lenses, they would be the 65mm and the 105mm. Second choice would be 65mm and 180mm.

Three lenses would definitely be 65, 105, and 180.

Also, you would really like to see this:

http://lrh.structuregraphs.com/test/mamiya_tlr_lens.htm

I found that the 65mm lens was too close to the 80mm lens, so I recommend the 55mm lens. I had and recommend the 250mm lens.

If you are going to do any close up work I recommend the Paramender to eliminate parallax guessing. http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=MAMIYA+PARAMENDER+C330

I have the 55m and really like it, also like the 180mm for portraits, both on a 330s. These are the black series. I've never shot with any of the chrome series, so I can't offer any info on these.

But I'm really not sure what lenses to get.

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Get them all. Seriously, since they can't be adapted to digital cameras easily the prices should be reasonable. You can put together a nice system.

It's my understanding, after talking to Paul Ebel or Carol Flutot (can't remember which one) some time ago, that the Seiko shutters are more serviceable from a parts perspective. But it's somewhat rare to actually need parts.

Thanks for the info everybody.
So get what I can afford is a good plan as for the most part all the lenses are good.

Skip the 1/400th early chrome shutter lenses - the Seikosha-S ones are more common and easier to fix. Chrome 180mm lenses _can_ be difficult on the auto-cocking camera bodies.

The 250mm is a strange beast. It is a manual cocking unit, and not especially fast - the TLR design with a 50mm axial separation puts a practical limit on the aperture - and is not that sharp. A 180mm Super enlarged (grain permitting) will probably do as well.

If the 80mm works well for you, then the 55mm offers a bigger jump than the 65mm. But if 105 is your preferred normal, then the 65mm might be wide enough. For portraits the amount of space comes into play. The 180 will be cramped in most domestic spaces.

Choice. Don't you just hate it?

grahamp said:

Skip the 1/400th early chrome shutter lenses - the Seikosha-S ones are more common and easier to fix. Chrome 180mm lenses _can_ be difficult on the auto-cocking camera bodies.

The 250mm is a strange beast. It is a manual cocking unit, and not especially fast - the TLR design with a 50mm axial separation puts a practical limit on the aperture - and is not that sharp. A 180mm Super enlarged (grain permitting) will probably do as well.

If the 80mm works well for you, then the 55mm offers a bigger jump than the 65mm. But if 105 is your preferred normal, then the 65mm might be wide enough. For portraits the amount of space comes into play. The 180 will be cramped in most domestic spaces.

Choice. Don't you just hate it?

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The difference between 80mm and 250mm is much better than 80mm to 180mm, but the fact that the 250mm was manual cocking gave the feel of being too fiddly. That was one of the things that drove me to trade the C330 in for a Hasselblad. Inconsistency can cause missteps and lead to lost photographs.

grahamp said:

The 250mm is a strange beast. It is a manual cocking unit, and not especially fast - the TLR design with a 50mm axial separation puts a practical limit on the aperture - and is not that sharp.

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Hi Graham and thanks for the M. FAQ.

The tests i found online showed it to be very sharp, almost at the same level of the 180 super. But I have no experience with this lens.

I would expect, of course, that due to the focal length and slow aperture, shooting it handheld will give less than optimum results.

But a 250 f6.3 lens for the 6x6 format is easy to design, and the 250 has 6 elements, which is a quite high number of elements for such a lens. So i'd expect it to be very good. For reference, the 250 f4.5 lens for the Mamiya RB67, which covers the 6x8 format, uses only 5 elements and gets excellent reviews.

EDIT: This link is relevant to the OP:
Dead Link Removed

Malinku, as you can see all Mamiya's lens are excellent, capable of great images and very affordable now. What to choose? It depends mainly on your style; I own a C220 with 80mm as standard lens, a 135 for head and shoulder portraits and 55 for landscape or cityscape. The one that I use less is the 55mm because wide-angle lenses don't fit my photografic style: I always find difficoulties in filling a frame with a wide-angle lens. It happens that I notice an "emptiness" in my images taken with wide-lenses, but I've found a Mamiya 55 in very good condition at only €100 so I couldn't resist and I bought it.

The 250mm is not _unsharp_, though the 180mm Super is better, I believe. It is hard to work with the 250mm at f6.3 compared to the 180mm at f4.5. If you are prepared to stop it down for f11 or so, it should do the job. My experience (I have both) is that I would rather use the 180mm Super and enlarge than carry the 250mm most of the time. But if I knew I needed 250mm or longer, that is where I would start.

grahamp said:

The 250mm is not _unsharp_, though the 180mm Super is better, I believe. It is hard to work with the 250mm at f6.3 compared to the 180mm at f4.5. If you are prepared to stop it down for f11 or so, it should do the job. My experience (I have both) is that I would rather use the 180mm Super and enlarge than carry the 250mm most of the time. But if I knew I needed 250mm or longer, that is where I would start.

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You may have a problem with your 250mm lens. My father used the 250mm lens since 1965 and never had a problem with it over thousand of slides. I used it in 2007 and I had no sharpness problems with it. I did not like the manual cocking, but optically I never had a problem with it.

Another question

So I just pick up a the 55mm f4.5 lens. (Seiko shutter version). So i got Wide angles now covered.
Now Im looking to pick up a longer focal length. I was thinking If getting 135mm or 105mm for this. I dont feel id use the 180mm lens as i hardly ever use the 150mm on my 645 system.

So Im wonder which lens would be better for portraits? Is there an difference in the macro ability of the lenses?

The 180 is the obvious choice. However, if you really feel you wouldn't like it, then I recommend the 135. In my opinion, the 105 is too close to the 80 for one to see that much difference. I have always found the 135 to be a nice lens. (I have 6 of the 7 focal lengths made for these cameras)

As for macro, check here: http://grahampatterson.home.comcast.net/~grahampatterson/grahamp/mfaq/mfaq-06.html This table shows that the 105 will get a bit "closer", but overall, I think the 135 is the better choice for portraits. Really, portrait and macro call for different things.

When I decided to downsize my Mamiya TLR kit, I settled on a 65mm and 135mm two lens kit. The 135mm is a great people lens. And a one body with those two lenses kit is nice and compact.